For those just now tuning in, Ron Paul (the physician turned congressman turned presidential candidate) has been taking some flak for a donation to his campaign by Don Black, the ironically named white supremacist and former KKK leader.
Dr. Paul’s campaign site now offers a statement clarifying his views on racism, although Dale Franks wonders if that statement will have the desired effect. Elsewhere, Jesse Benton, the comms director for Dr. Paul’s campaign, responds to an NRO/Mona Charen column with a multi-layered defense of his boss’s reputation, including a passage on the race issue.
Dr. Paul stands for freedom, peace, prosperity, and the protection of inalienable individual rights. He knows that liberty is the antidote for racism, anti-Semitism, and other small minded ideologies. Dr. Paul has focused all of his energy on winning the presidency so he can cut the size of government and protect the freedom of every American. Neither he nor his staff is going to waste time screening donors. If a handful of individuals with views anathema to Dr. Paul’s send in checks, then they have wasted their money. I cannot profess to understand the motivations of Don Black as neither Dr. Paul nor I know who he is, but a simple Google search shows that his $500 contribution has netted him at least 88 news hits, including Charen’s column. Perhaps a better explanation for his “contribution” is not support for Ron, but the attention he knew he would receive.
Andrew Sullivan’s reaction: “I guess [Paul] needs the money.”
From where I’m standing, it seems the Paul campaign makes some good points, the same points I was willing to concede to Hillary’s campaign when they were questioned about shady donations, namely: (1) If campaign organizations screened every donor to the nth degree, they’d never do anything else. (2) Clueless is the person who believes that — in today’s world of $500 million presidential campaigns — a donor can buy favor with a couple thousand or few hundred dollars.
On the other hand, I think the most effective political leaders recognize that, while gestures are sometimes nothing but symbolic, they can also be a very powerful means of signaling, in no uncertain terms, the character of the official in question. Conversely, the systematic refusal to embrace such gestures implies a concentration of stubbornness akin to the bullheaded posturing we’ve endured since Inauguration Day, January 2001.