WSJ: Meet the Paulnuts

posted at 10:03 am on November 26, 2007 by Allahpundit
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Pretty thin, actually, for the simple reason that they don’t detail much actual abuse. But read it anyway for the quotes. I like this one from Erick at Red State:

“Basically, it got to the point where someone could put up a post saying they were going to the bathroom, and a dozen Paultards would comment, ‘Vote for Ron Paul while you’re there,’ along with another dozen warnings of the Zionist conspiracy in the toilet,” says Erick Erickson, founder of popular conservative blog Redstate. A month ago, the site banned posts from some Paul supporters, branding them “MoRons.”

The Journal, bless its heart, even scared up a comment from Stormfront founder and proud Ron Paul supporter Don Black. David Freddoso cites Paul’s failure to disgorge Black’s donation in today’s NRO as proof of his political artlessness but concedes that accepting and retaining the money doesn’t mean Paul’s pro-Nazi. True enough, but it does suggest a curious indifference to a constituency, however small, that’s recognized universally as evil. One can imagine a logistical headache lurking here if the Paul camp has reason to believe it’s received lots of donations from Stormfront members whose identities it doesn’t know; that would leave them open to oppo research teams potentially uncovering new Klansmen donors potentially every few weeks, in which case it’s better to set a blanket “we’ll accept anyone’s money” policy now and get the issue off the table. Is that what’s happening here? Do they think they have a white-supremacist problem among their contributors? If not, why not just dump Black’s money and get rid of this nuisance? He’s not a guy even a self-styled maverick like Paul would/should want to go to bat for on principle and, like Freddoso says, it’s killing his mainstream credibility.

Exit question: Whither libertarianism?

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