Ron Paul: Newsletters? What newsletters? (AP Photo)

Texas Congressman and perennial Presidential contender Ron Paul changed his story again on his involvement with the controversial newsletters bearing his name published in the 1980s and 90s, telling a radio caller Thursday that, yes, he did write a “certain portion” of the material.

After claiming he “didn’t write them” and “didn’t see them” before walking off a CNN interview a week ago, Paul took another turn in his history of changing stories and told a caller on WHO-AM radio in Iowa:

Well, the newsletters were written, you know, a long time ago. And I wrote a certain portion of them. I would write the economics. So a lot of what you just mentioned… this would be material that I would turn in, and it would become part of the letter. But there were many times when I didn’t edit the whole letter, and things got put in. And I didn’t even really become aware of the details of that until many years later when somebody else called and said, you know what was in it? But these were sentences that were put in, a total of eight or ten sentences, and it was bad stuff. It wasn’t a reflection of my views at all. So it got in the letter, I thought it was terrible, it was tragic, you know and I had some responsibility for it, because my name went on the letter. But I was not an editor. I’m like a publisher.

Let’s take a closer look at Paul’s non-denial denial.  A week ago, he acted like he had absolutely nothing to do with the newsletters even though he defended the comments back in 1996 when questioned by the Dallas Morning News .  He claimed in 1996 that the racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic remarks were “taken out of context.”

In the 2008 Presidential campaign, when Capitol Hill Blue questioned him about the newsletter, he claimed he had “little to do” with writing or producing them.  Last week, he said “I didn’t write them, I didn’t read them and I disavow them.” Was he talking about the entire content of newsletters or just the questionable parts?  He didn’t make a distinction last week.  It appeared he was trying to disassociate himself from the newsletters altogether.

Now, once again, he’s admitting he wrote “a certain portion” and that “I didn’t edit the whole letters,” which suggests he edited at least some of them. He also says he has “some responsibility” for what appeared under his name.

Some responsibility? This from a small-time on-again, off-again Texas Congressman who claims he didn’t know what was being published and distributed under his name for 20 years and who now wants us to think he can run a country?

On the radio show, Paul says it wasn’t until “many years later” that “somebody else called” and told him about the racist comment and other slurs in the newsletters.

That is a lie.  The “somebody else” who called was Catalina Camia of the Dallas Morning News Washington bureau.  She called him in 1996 about the content of the newsletters after questions were raised by Paul’s opponent in his race to return to Congress after a 10-year absence.  The opponent found some of the racist comments in a 1992 edition of the Ron Paul political report but a review of several years of the newsletters by Capitol Hill Blue found some of the comments raised as a campaign issue were also printed in editions less a year earlier.  At the time, Paul didn’t deny writing the words, he just said they were “taken out of context.”

Wrote Camia on May 22, 1996: “Dr. Paul denied suggestions that he was a racist and said he was not evoking stereotypes when he wrote the columns. He said they should be read and quoted in their entirety to avoid misrepresentation.”

Key words here.  Camia wrote “he wrote the columns.”  Did Paul call up the Dallas Morning News and claim she misquoted or misrepresented his comments about writing the columns?  He did not. Did he or his campaign then say he “didn’t write the columns?”  They did not.  Paul did not start claiming he didn’t write the stuff until five years later.

Paul also claimed in a radio interview in Dallas that his newsletters had nothing to do with his campaign to return to Congress in 1996.

Carmia found otherwise. She wrote on May 22, 1996: “A phone call to the newsletter’s toll-free number was answered by his campaign staff.”

Another lie by Paul.

Paul continued to publish the newsletters for another 10 years and a review of issues published since they became a campaign issue in 1996 shows far more than “eight or 10 sentences” that contain homophobia and antisemitism.

Paul claims he isn’t a racist and close friends say they’ve never heard him utter a racial slur but he has no qualms about benefiting from the company of racists or anti-Semites.  He bragged to Ed Crane, president of the CATO institute that his “best source for congressional campaign donations was the mailing list for the Spotlight,” a racist, anti-Semitic tabloid published by Willis Carto, who claims the Holocaust never happened.

James Kirchick, a fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a contributing editor for New Republic, notes that Paul pals around with conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones and continues to hold extremist views that are far outside the mainstream.

Noting that the Republican Jewish Coalition did not invite Paul to its Republican Presidential candidates forum, Kirchick writes in the conservative Weekly Standard:

While Paul’s views on Israel certainly place him outside the American, never mind Republican, mainstream, there is an even more elementary reason the RJC was right to exclude him from its event. It is Paul’s lucrative and decades-long promotion of bigotry and conspiracy theories, for which he has yet to account fully, and his continuing espousal of extremist views, that should make him unwelcome at any respectable forum, not only those hosted by Jewish organizations.

Kirchick adds:

No conspiracy theory was too outlandish for Paul’s endorsement. One newsletter reported on the heretofore unknown phenomenon of “Needlin’,” in which “gangs of black girls between the ages of 12 and 14” roamed the streets of New York and injected white women with possibly HIV-infected syringes. Another newsletter warned that “the AIDS patient” should not be allowed to eat in restaurants because “AIDS can be transmitted by saliva,” a strange claim for a physician to make.

Paul gave credence to the theory, later shown to have been the product of a Soviet disinformation effort, that AIDS had been created in a U.S. government laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Three months before far-right extremists killed 168 Americans in Oklahoma City, Paul’s newsletter praised the “1,500 local militias now training to defend liberty” as “one of the most encouraging developments in America.” And he offered specific advice to antigovernment militia members, such as, “Keep the group size down,” “Keep quiet and you’re harder to find,” “Leave no clues,” “Avoid the phone as much as possible,” and “Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”

And continues:

Paul has gone right on appearing regularly on the radio program of Alex Jones, the most popular conspiracy theorist in America (unless that distinction belongs to Paul himself). To understand Jones’s paranoid worldview, it helps to watch a recent documentary he produced, Endgame: Blueprint for Global Enslavement, which reveals the secret plot of George Pataki, David Rockefeller, and Queen Beatrix, among other luminaries, to exterminate humanity and transform themselves into “superhuman” computer hybrids able to “travel throughout the cosmos.” There is nothing Jones believes the American government isn’t capable of, from “[encouraging] homosexuality with chemicals so that people don’t have children” to blowing up the Space Shuttle Columbia, a “textbook psychological warfare operation.”

When questioned about the content of the newsletters again by Texas Monthly in 2001, Paul — for the first time — claimed the words weren’t his and tried to distance himself from some of the more inflammatory statements.

So Paul’s newest story is that he didn’t write or see “eight or 10 sentences” of the newsletter.

What about the many conspiracies touted in the newsletters, including warnings of a Jewish takeover of the United States, claims about AK-47 wielding IRS against breaking down doors and charges that the United States would force Americans to “turn in all their money” so it could be replaced with pink currency embedded with electronic tracking capabilities?

“The money is now pink you know,” Paul said in the Thursday radio interview.

Hmmmm.

Former Paul senior aide Eric Dondero says Paul personally read and approved all the newsletters.

Paul’s campaign claims Dondero is a disgruntled ex-employee who has an ax to grind because he was fired.

Capitol Hill Blue has interviewed a number of former Paul aides who back Dondero’s story but he is — so far — the only one willing to go public.

So who can we believe?  Good question but after examining Paul’s ever-changing story on the newsletters as well as his continued alliance with fanatical conspiracy theorists and statements that suggest homophobia and anti-Semitism it is becoming more and more obvious that one person we cannot believe or trust is Ron Paul himself.

(Updated with additional material)

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Ron Paul: Who, me?

Ron Paul got a free pass from the media as long as he was a backbencher with a fringe following but when he surged in the Iowa polls, the press woke up and took a closer look at the history of the Texas Congressman.

And the Fourth Estate didn’t like what it found.

The problem, Howard Kurtz at The Daily Beast reports, is that the story was there all along.  All it took was somebody to take more than a cursory look at Paul’s background.

Writes Kurtz:

The explosive material that is fueling the negative coverage of Ron Paul, from his isolationist foreign policy to the racist newsletters published in his name, has been readily available to journalists. There was no need to assemble an investigative team to meet sources in parking garages; all that was required was a simple database search.

But in a stunning dereliction of duty, the vast majority of the press corps couldn’t be bothered.

Kurtz is right that the story has been there. Capitol Hill Blue covered it in depth in the 2008 Presidential campaingn.  The Dallas Morning News exposed Paul’s racist and homophobic newsletters in 1996.  So did the Austin American Statesman and the Texas Monthly.

So where was the rest of the media?  Asleep at the wheel (to borrow the name of one of our favorite Texas swing bands).

Kurtz continues:

We all know the media can’t walk, chew gum, and cover more than two presidential candidates at a time. All too often, journalists are like lemmings, marching in lockstep after whoever has gotten a bump in the polls. That’s why the news business has lurched from Trump to Bachmann to Perry to Cain to Newt to Paul (and perhaps now Santorum, who’s blipped up to third in Iowa in a CNN/Time survey).

But it’s not as though Paul had some hidden past that could be excavated only through dusty court records. He says stuff every day—eliminate aid to Israel, abolish the Fed, get rid of the income tax, bring American soldiers home from around the world—that would create a firestorm around any other candidate.

Of course, none of this matters to the Ron Paul faithful. They claim it’s all old news. That’s true but it became current news when the grandfather of all politicians got huffy with a CNN anchor and walked off the set because she had the gall to ask him to explain his involvement with the newsletters that padded his bank account by a million or so bucks a year.

From where we sit, Paul has not only evaded the issue for too many years, he has changed his story more often than a teenager caught breaking curfew. In other words, he lied.

Does this matter to the Ron Paul Greek chorus?  Of course not. Their candidate is Saint Paul, the political messiah who can do no wrong.  It doesn’t matter that many of his positions are so outrageous, so unworkable, so far-fetched that they would destroy the American economy, gut our defensive capabilities and push America back into the dark ages.  Ron Paul, in their eyes, is infallible and cannot be questioned.

But can a man who — as he claims — knew nothing about the racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic content of two-decades of newsletters published in his name be trusted at the helm of a nation?  Logic says no, but logic left the building long ago.

Kurtz adds:

To be sure, Paul says he never read most of what was published in the Ron Paul Freedom Report, Ron Paul Political Report, and other similarly named journals. But even if we take him at his word, the questions are obvious: Why didn’t you know? What does this say about your management skills? Why would you associate with people who would put out this filth?

That these questions are just now starting to be asked, on the eve of the Iowa caucuses, is an embarrassment for the media. And Paul’s testy responses make clear that he did not expect to have to explain these incendiary words that he now dismisses as old news.

Sorry Ronnie.  Your supporters kept complaining that the media wasn’t paying attention to you.

Well, they’re paying attention now and everything old is new again.

Be careful what you wish for.

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Mitt Romney: Showing strength in Iowa...maybe

A new CNN/Time poll for Iowa is good news for Mitt Romney, great news for Rick Santorum, fair news for Ron Paul and a disaster for the plummeting Newt Gingrich.

Romney has moved into a three point lead over Paul — 25 to 22 percent — which is a statistical tie when the margin of error is factored.  Santorum jumps to third with 16 percent and Gingrich continues his free-fall to 14 percent.

An early December poll showed Gingrich leading Romney 33 to 20 percent, Paul in third at 17 percent and Santorum well off the political radar at 5 percent.

Romney’s campaign took the news cautiously, continuing its strategy of keeping expectations low.  Paul’s campaign — which enthusiastically touts polls when they show their candidate in the lead — dismissed the CNN/Time survey as “meaningless,” because it questioned only Republicans while Iowans can change their registration at the door.

Santorum is gloating, saying the poll proves that people are starting to buy into his claim to the social conservatives who still haven’t made up their mind.

Gingrich, for a change, isn’t saying much.  He attacked Ron Paul Wednesday, saying the Libertarian Congressman’s views are “completely out of touch” with most Americans.

So what does it all mean?  Not much, because Iowa’s convoluted — and some might say outdated — caucus system often defies polls and pops out surprises.  It does show, however, that many potential potential Iowa caucus goers still haven’t made up their minds about the large and muddled field of GOP contenders.

“This is a race between Romney and Paul,” strategist Sharon Taft tells Capitol Hill Blue.  “A second for Romney is a win and if he takes New Hampshire as expected then he’s on the road to the nomination.  If Paul wins or comes in second, he’s still alive and remains an influence, particularly in South Carolina and Florida.”

The GOP field: God, help us

The “official” Republican presidential primary season begins in a week with the Iowa caucuses.  Then we get down to real voting in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida and so on.

And for what?  To determine which loser running under the Republican banner wins the dubious right to go up against another loser — current President Barack Obama — in November 2012.

When we at Capitol Hill Blue look over the crop of candidates vying for the title we gotta wonder: “Where did they find these folks?”

Looking at the list of dismal choices, the mind boggles.  This is the best the GOP can do?  Given Obama’s many failures, beating him next year should be a walk but not with the gaggle contending for the top slot on the Republican ballot.

Looking at the pretenders…er, contenders:

Former Massachusetts Mitt Romney:  A so-called moderate in a sea of right-wing tsunamis, Romney  has led the pack for most of 2011, except when various flavors of the week like Donald Trump (who never formally announced), Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich grabbed the spot light for their short time in the sun.

Romney, in his second-straight try, is the spit and polish candidate for 2012.  He has a message honed by the best consultants and focus groups that money can buy — and he has plenty of campaign cash, including his personal fortune.

But Romney is more product than candidate, a carefully-crafted package with shifting positions, varying opinions and changing themes depending on which special interest group that he wants to impress.  He’s an image candidate without depth, a suit without substance and a political robot designed to spew out any words that work with a target audience.

Unless things change drastically, he will probably win the nomination.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich:  The man who single-highhandedly brought an end to civility, coalition-building and cooperation on Capitol Hill.

Gingrich is a junkyard dog with the libido of a rabbit in heat.  His sexual appetite matches the wide ranging territory of former President Bill Clinton and he has yet to meet a wife that he won’t dump for something younger. Calista is the current trophy wife but that can change if something younger and more willing comes along.

He was a frontrunner for a while, until his considerable baggage began to spill out of a dark and sordid closet;

Texas Congressman Ron Paul. If enthusiasm from a small but fiercely loyal band of followers could translate into votes, Paul would be on his way to a nomination but voters aren’t sure which Paul is real:  The grandfatherly, gentle Libertarian or the fire-breathing anarchist who predicts race wars in the cities and collapse of America as we know it.

As scrutiny increases on Paul’s extremism and questionable past, his appeal decreases. After South Carolina he will be left to ponder what his fan base thought might have been but in reality never was;

Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann: Christian fundamentalists say women should be seen and not heard.  Bachmann makes that dogma seem necessary.  The bombastic representative suffers from diarrhea of the mouth and lack of usable brain function.  Other women may be worthy of the presidential mantle but Bachmann ain’t one of them. Walk two steps behind the men honey. That’s where you belong;

Texas Gov. Rick Perry:  There are three things wrong with Perry:  His right-wing extremism, the fact that the last thing we need in the White House is another Texas Governor and….and…and…what was the third thing?

Perry is the Peter Principle in real time:  Every politician, given time, will rise to his (or her) level of incompetence;

Former Senator Rick Santorum:  What?  He’s still in the race?

Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman.  We want to like this guy.  We really do. After all, he rides a Harley but that’s about all he does.  He might finish third in New Hampshire but that will be his day in the sun.

There are a couple of others around but they should have followed Herman Cain and exited, stage right.

So who do we support?

Not a damn one.  If only “none of the above” were a choice…

"Dr. Doom" Ron Paul speaks in Iowa (REUTERS/Joshua Lott)

Ron Paul disavows newsletters and direct mail solicitations from the 1990s that spout doomsday scenarios but his speeches on the campaign stump with a week to go before the Iowa caucuses promote the same doom and gloom about the nation he wants to lead.

Even worse, non-partisan experts as well as members of his own party increasingly raise concerns about the extreme positions he espouses and the drastic changes he advocates.

“Paul appeals to people whose knowledge of major issues is superficial (and) he sees conspiracies where there are none,” Greg Valliere, chief political strategist at Potomac Research Group, tell Reuters. “If he does well in Iowa, which is likely, it will be an enormous embarrassment to the Republicans.”

Republicans voice the same concerns.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, winner of the 2008 Iowa caucuses, calls Paul “out of touch” with most Americans and the GOP.

Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar agrees, saying Paul is too extreme even for an American public fed up with status quo in Washington.

And while Paul claims the racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic and isolationist rants that spewed from his newsletter like verbal diarrhea in the 1980s and 1990s weren’t his, his words on the campaign trail sound some of the same messages.

A direct mail that Paul claims he didn’t write, didn’t see and didn’t approve, warned of “race wars” in the cities.

Here’s what he said at a recent campaign stop in Bettendorf, Iowa:

I’m afraid of violence coming. When you see what the government is preparing for, and the arrests and military law, and the demonstrations in the streets, some people aren’t going to be convinced so easily that you don’t owe them a living.

“He’s toned down the rhetoric but the message is the same,” a GOP strategist tells Capitol Hill Blue. “That message is ‘be afraid, be very afraid’ and the remarks about violence and ‘owe them a living’ has a racial tinge to it.  He knows that message will resonate with those who are afraid of people of color.  He appeals to base fears of unsophisticated voters who are driven by ignorance, not reason.”

Paul wants to dismantle the Federal Reserve, which provides the underpinning of the not only America’s economy but that of the world.  He claims there is a United Nations-driven conspiracy to take over America’s monetary system.

Says Paul:

This monetary crisis is well known by the international bankers. They want the U.N. to come in and solve this problem. The dollar will probably eventually disintegrate and be taken over. But I don’t want the U.N. issuing that currency.

The answer, Paul claims, is a return to the gold standard — the same message advocated in those newsletters he said he didn’t write or approve and now disavows.

Paul’s proposal, economists say, would turn control of America’s money supply over to gold miners in South Africa and Uzbekistan.

“If you like what OPEC means for oil prices, you’d love what the gold standard would do to financial markets,” Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist for JPMorgan Chase, told Reuters.

Meanwhile, more and more evidence surfaces that show Paul in 1996 not only did not deny writing the newsletters but even touted them in interviews and his campaign spokesmen at the time said the words were his.

A story in the July 1996 edition of the Austin American Statesman noted that Paul had refused to release copies of the newsletter in his Congressional campaign, saying that he had “written thousands of items over the past 20 years” and that releasing the copies would be “impractical.”  Paul, who was running against a lawyer, said releasing copies of the newsletters, which he did not deny writing, would be like asking his lawyer opponent to “provide documents for every lawsuit he has been involved in during his lengthy legal career.”

Michael Sullivan, Paul’s campaign spokesman at the time, acknowledged Paul wrote the newsletters and said:

Dr. Paul is being quoted out of context. It’s like picking up ‘War and Peace’ and reading the fourth paragraph on page 481 and thinking you can understand what’s going on.

You have to understand what he is writing. Democrats in Texas are trying to stir things up by using half quotes to impugn his character. His writings are intellectual. He assumes people will do their own research, get their own statistics, think for themselves and make informed judgments.

The Paul campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

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Ron Paul: The joker in an out-of-control political poker game?

Hypocrisy is the constant bedfellow of most — if not all — politicians and even afflicts Ron Paul, the so-called “savior of America” on the GOP primary ticket.

Yes, the grandfatherly doctor so revered by his followers is a flagrant hypocrite who evades the truth and preaches one game while practicing another.

If one is to believe the self-righteous proclamations of Ron Paul and his fanatical followers, the long-time Texas Congressman is so clueless that he had “no idea” that newsletters bearing his name spewed out racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic bile during the 1980s and 90s.

Yeah, right.  And there will be pork in the treetops by morning.

But it gets worse. Paul, if we are to believe his campaign spokesmen, also didn’t know that direct mail solicitations sent out over his signature encouraged Americans to “cash in” on the “coming chaos” by capitalizing on the misfortunes of others. He didn’t know that his direct mail pieces predicted a “race war” in big cities and claimed the Israeli lobby plays Congress “like a cheap harmonica.”

If this kind of behavior were attributed to Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney, Ron Paul supporters would be flooding web sites with their usual collection of obscenity-spouting comments and emails attacking Romney and Gingrich.  They also resort to such tactics when defending the leader of their cult.

In the end, Ron Paul is just another double-talking con-artist who bilks millions out of a gullible following by playing on fear, paranoia and ignorance.  He allows race-baiting comments to be sent out under his name while voting for a national holiday for Dr. Martin Luther King.  That way he can still appeal to the racists and homophobes who make up such a large part of his base while cultivating the grandfather image with baseless claims to be concerned about ordinary Americans and the Constitution.

Consider this:  If Ron Paul couldn’t control what was done in his name as an on-again, off-again Congressman from Texas, how can we trust him as a leader of America?

We can’t.  Ron Paul doesn’t love America.  He hates this country.

Capitol Hill Blue took a look at Ron Paul’s finances and finds he is another political con man who uses his office and campaigns to make money at the expense of those dumb enough to buy into his act.

Want to pull down close to a millions bucks a year?  Just publish The Ron Paul Political Report and the Ron Paul Investment Letter for $99 annually and then deny any involvement when the crap hits the fan.

It doesn’t matter if the story changes or the excuses run from “the comments were taken out of context” to “I didn’t see them, I didn’t read them and I wasn’t aware of them.”

According to his Congressional financial reports, Paul banked the money from the newsletters.  Are we to believe he put nearly a million dollars a year into his bank accounts and didn’t look or care about the source of the money?

Every time he runs for President, Ron Paul holds on to most of the millions raised and then coverts those funds for his own use after he loses — which is exactly what will happen when he fails in 2012.

Such is the art of the con. Paul knows that no matter how unbelievable or outrageous his actions, his ardent followers will still defend those actions and claim he is a modern political messiah.  That is how cults operate and thrive.

The bottom line is simple: Ron Paul is a crook. He took the money. He just can’t take the responsibility.  He knows he can’t win but he knows how to cash in.

Ron Paul is no better than any other candidate.  In too many ways, he’s far worse.  He’s a zealot with a fanatical following that blindly buys into the hype of Ron Paul while ignoring the reality of the con.

Thankfully, some don’t take a bite of the Ron Paul apple.  Even the right-wing Wall Street Journal, owned by Rupert Murdoch, isn’t fooled:

Dorothy Rabinowitz, a member of the Journal’s editorial board, calls Paul “the best-known of our homegrown propagandists for our chief enemies in the world.”  In other words, someone who gives aid and comfort to the enemy.”

Most people call that treason.  We call it using a hatred of America to get rich.

When you take a close look at Ron Paul’s finances you find that he sells the United States short and invests heavily in South African and Canadian gold.  Paul is a millionaire several times over but he doesn’t invest in U.S. companies.  Since 2002, the bulk of his investments have been in Canadian mining firms and South African gold.

The Wall Street Journal asked investment counselor William Bernstein to examine Paul’s investments.  Bernstein said Paul’s investment strategy is based on paranoia and bets heavily on failure of the United States.

”This portfolio is a half-step away from a cellar-full of canned goods and nine-millimeter rounds,” Bernstein told the Journal.

Which may explain why so many militia types, homegrown terror organizations and survivalists support Ron Paul.

Ron Paul hates America. He wants it to fail so he can get rich.

Just another con by just another con artist who cares only about himself.

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If the proposed ordinance scheduled for a public hearing at Floyd County High School on Jan. 31, 2012, stands, proposed wind generator farms for Floyd County will never be built.

The Floyd County board of supervisors, in a 3-0 vote — with two of the five supervisors abstaining — gave preliminary approval Tuesday to an ordnance that would effectively ban development of the wind generator farms along the county’s ridge lines — along with any other development that extends more than 40 feet above virtually any ridge line.

The county has asked for use of the high school auditorium for what is expected to be a large crowd to discuss an issue that has dominated debate in the county for the past several months.

Supervisors had three choices: do nothing, create an ordinance regulating development or just ban it outright.

Several counties in Virginia regulate development on or near ridgelines.  Only two others prohibit it. If Floyd County’s proposed ordinance becomes law early next year, we will become the third.

Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Ron Paul

Texas Congressman Ron Paul is on the move in Iowa, passing former GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney for second in polls and even moving into a statistical tie with current leader Newt Gingrich in one.

“Paul is surging right now, there’s no doubt about that,” one GOP strategist tells Capitol Hill Blue. “He could be the dark horse that shocks both Romney and Gingrich.

New polls show support for Gingrich slipping slightly in Iowa with three weeks to go before the state caucuses that official open the Presidential primary season.

And while the former Speaker of the House leads in surveys, poll numbers don’t always translate into a win in the Iowa’s convoluted caucus system.

GOP political operatives agree that Paul has the best on-the-ground operation in Iowa and the ground game rules in the caucuses.

In addition, Paul — more than any other candidate in the crowded GOP field — is willing to go after Gingrich for his personal and political failures.

“I have to expose him for what he’s been doing over the years,” Paul is quoted as saying.

As a long-time member of the House, Paul was on Capitol Hill during Gingrich’s rise and fall from political power.  The Libertarian and family values Paul is clearly disgusted with Gingrich’s multiple affairs, three marriages and close ties to the Washington establishment.

Over in the Romney camp, strategists there secretly hope for a Paul win.  Losing in Iowa cold cripple Gingrich and open the door for Romney in New Hampshire and Iowa.

But what about Paul?  Some still doubt his long-term viability as a candidate.

Writes Chris Cillizza in The Fix for The Washington Post:

A Paul victory in Iowa would be a dream come true for Romney. Why? Because Paul, like former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee in 2008, has far less obvious appeal in the states beyond Iowa and would likely struggle to build his caucus victory into a broader national campaign.

Paul’s enthusiastic supporters disagree.  They see a win in Iowa as the surge Paul needs to build momentum towards the nomination.

Impossible?  Not in an election year where the unlikely is the new normal.  This is the time when anything can — and probably will — happen.

Related articles

• Ron Paul: Poised For An Upset In Iowa? (huffingtonpost.com)
• Ron Paul Surging In Iowa? (outsidethebeltway.com)
• Ron Paul Vaults Into Virtual Iowa Tie With Newt Gingrich: Poll (ibtimes.com)
• Did Ron Paul Just Erase Gingrich’s Lead in Iowa? (swampland.time.com)
• Paul Surges in Iowa (politicalwire.com)
• Ron Paul Leapfrogs Romney in Iowa Polls (thestreet.com)

Ross Truett Ashley (Photo from Virginia State Police)

If you can believe those giving interviews to reporters about Ross Truett Ashley, the 22-year-old parttime Radford University student who gunned down a Virginia Tech police officer Thursday before blowing his own brains out, the murdering young man was just a “quiet, typical college student.”

Yet this typical, quiet college student — who made the Deans List at UVA-Wise — recently shaved his head and ran up and down the halls of his apartment building in Radford, where he stole a Mercedes-Benz SUV from his landlord the day before he decided to kill a cop for no apparent reason.

Virginia State Police identified Ashley Friday, saying the agency was sure he was the one who walked up to Tech police officer Deriek W. Crouse early Thursday afternoon and shot him in the head while the officer was sitting in his car following a routine traffic stop on the Blacksburg campus.

Ashley then fled to a campus parking area called The Cage and killed himself as a deputy closed in.

The part time student at Radford University lived in an apartment above a yogurt shop, consignment store and tattoo parlor in Radford. Neighbors said he was mostly quiet, although he had a habit of running up and down the hallway of the three-story apartment building.

Mandy Adams, a Radford grad student, told the Associated Press that Ashley recently shaved his head.

“He would just run down the hallway — never walk, always run,” Adams said. “It’s going to be really creepy when they come to stake his stuff out of here.”

Really creepy?  Some might think that a guy who runs up and down an apartment building hall and who shaved his head might be creepy as well. What do you call it when that same “quiet, typical college student” walks up to a police car and kills a war veteran, husband and father of five?

Related articles

• Radford student Ross Truett Ashley identified as alleged Virginia Tech gunman (100gf.wordpress.com)
• Va. Tech Gunman Called Quiet; Went to Small School (abcnews.go.com)
• Va. Tech shooter had no ties to the university – CBS News (cbsnews.com)
• Virginia Tech Gunman ‘From Nearby College’ (news.sky.com)

The GOP cast: The show must go on

From any rational point of view, the Republican party is in a mess as it stumbles towards naming a candidate to face Barack Obama in 2012.

In its manic scramble to find someone — anyone — to stave off former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney‘s seemingly inevitable march to the nomination, the GOP is turning to an endless series of flawed, unqualified or inept pretenders to the throne.

With scandal-scarred, former speaker of the house Newt Gingrich joining the latest revolving door of perceived frontrunners, the center ring of this circus is complete.

Republicans now face the choice of looking the other way when it comes to the sexual predatory nature of former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain, the mind-lapsing ineptness of Texas Gov. Rick Perry or the shoot-from-the-lip, take-the-money-and-run history of Gingrich.

To borrow an old line from former Harvard math professor and songwriter-satirist Tom Lehrer, Republicans have to feel like “a Christian Scientist With Appendicitis.”

The sad fact is that none of these pretenders can stand the spotlight of public scrutiny.

Rick Perry fell apart in the debates as his lack of knowledge, inability to remember even his own stump speech talking points and too many “deer in the headlight” moments revealed that this Texas stereotype is all hat and no cattle.

Herman Cain’s past as a powerful man who likes to use that power to sexually harass women isn’t his only problem.  His lack of knowledge on key issues came out in a newspaper editorial board interview and his lame attempts at crisis management showcases a man who clearly is not up to the job.

And Gingrich’s problematic history with the million dollar plus payments from Freddie Mac is just the tip of a political iceberg that could sink an entire fleet of ships.

This the best the GOP has to offer?  These guys are the star studs in the elephant herd?

Some pundits try to tell us that Jon Huntsman is the sleeper candidate but he’s mired at the bottom of every poll. Michele Bachmann has faded into the obscurity she so richly deserves.’

Which leaves us with Ron Paul, the twice-failed candidate for President (once as a Libertarian and once as a Republican), the favorite of a small — but hard core and highly vocal — cadre of supporters.

Some polls show Paul as a contender in the upcoming Iowa caucuses.  He might win, given the spoiler nature of Iowa’s strange caucus system, but a win in Iowa doesn’t translate into an easy path to the nomination.  New Hampshire has a habit of thinning the herd and Paul is barely a blip on the radar there.

Paul also has his share of baggage and a closet full of skeletons — including his past association with the ultra-right-wing John Birch Society and a slew of newsletters published under his name that included racist comments — although he denies writing the commentaries.  That and his history of off-the-wall comments and extreme positions scare the hell out of the mainstream GOP voters he needs to become a serious contender and are even more out-of-touch with independents who will determine who wins in 2012..

Paul will make a lot of noise early on but he won’t win the nomination. As in 2008, he won’t even come close.  He doesn’t have the organization and stuffing online polls or wining straw polls is not a path to collecting delegates for a nomination or wins in states where voters — not hand-picked caucus participants — have the final say.

Iowa is a sideshow that gets far more attention than it deserves.  The real race begins when the first voter steps into the first voting booth in the first actual primary of the season.

At this point, the odds favor Romney when that process starts.  In this volatile political climate those odds could change quickly but it will probably not be someone named Cain, Perry, Huntsman, Bachmann, Paul or Gingrich who turns those odds.

Each is a pretender to a throne that is still seeking a credible — and electable — leader.

(Song lyrics from Karn Evil 9 – 1st Impression, Part 2 by Emerson, Lake and Palmer)

Related articles

• Bloomberg: Iowa is a four-man race (capitolhillblue.com)
• Romney, Gingrich shine in latest GOP debate (capitolhillblue.com)
• Another Poll Has Gingrich Leading (politicalwire.com)
• Gingrich tries to muzzle biggest foe: himself (seattletimes.nwsource.com)