[jterce]

Frankly, anyone who has paid attention to what Paul has actually said or done in the last 20 years knows this in no way represents his views. In fact, quite the opposite, Paul is by far the most open and tolerant in the GOP field. The fact that some people are willing to focus on these says more about them than about Paul.

[narrator]

The mainstream media works its magic by taking a mural 100 miles square and repeatedly hilighting the same 50 square inches. They do this in order to create the perception that fits their agenda, and ignoring the rest. It's an extremely effective technique. It's very easy to control what people think, not by lying to them, but controlling what they think about.

[roguecoder]

http://rightwingnews.com/election-2012/statement-from-fmr-ro... has good details on one close staffer's view of his distrust of Black and Latin@ culture.

He's not racist, as long as people of all colors assimilate into his culture. I can see the confusion: people who aren't part of this culture see that as a set of racist, irrational beliefs that lead to stop-and-frisk harassment and profiling in airports, whereas Ron Paul obviously has a cultural fear of people different from himself and doesn't equate that with skin color except by correlation. He doesn't consider this "racism", and thus is offended by the implications.

We disagree on the terms and on whether or not it is a disqualifying feature for the highest office in the land, but we should at least be able to agree that the only evidence we have for what he believes have been the things he's done or said. That he began claiming he never did them when they became politically inconvenient doesn't mean he's changed his mind.

I wouldn't care what he said 20 years ago if he stood up and said, "yes, I said those things. Since then, however, I have spent more time with people from cultures I had previously been isolated from and feared, as many of us do when faced with the unfamiliar. I now appreciate that theses communities have come together in the face of adversity and are an assets to this nation." Instead he claimed that Not Me did it, and looks about as mature as that kid from Family Circus while doing so.

[gyardley]

Uh-huh. I've paid attention to Paul just fine, and I can see he's not against Jews at all, unless we want to have a country - you know, like hundreds of other peoples.

Thanks, but I can do without his form of 'tolerance'. Anyone else in the GOP is preferable.