Ron Paul (Image Credit: Cory Barnes / Wikimedia)

Ron Paul has — without question — the most dedicated supporters of any presidential candidate in decades. Perhaps the Buchanan Brigades of 1992 and 1996 showed something like the enthusiasm of Paul backers, but that before everyone was online. Today, the comments section of any article on the 2012 presidential race in even the mainstream media will be deluged with Paul supporters arguing that their man is the only one who will preserve the Constitution, keep us out of foreign wars, and scale back government.

I voted for Ron Paul in 2008 and agree with most of his economic and foreign policy views — and I am not alone. According to the latest polls, Mr. Paul could win in Iowa tomorrow and is gaining steam nationally.

The race-realist section of the blogosphere is one of the most enthusiastic sources of support for Mr. Paul. For example, a December 16 poll on the website of the Council of Conservative Citizens had Ron Paul as the choice of 80 percent of respondents. His closest rival was Michelle Bachman at 8 percent.

Why is there so much support for Mr. Paul among racially conscious whites? Perhaps some remember the old Ron Paul newsletters of the 1990s. The newsletters came up in the 2008 campaign and have predictably surfaced again, now that Mr. Paul is a serious contender. Some quotes:

“Boy, it sure burns me to have a national holiday for Martin Luther King. I voted against this outrage time and time again as a Congressman. What an infamy that Ronald Reagan approved it! We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day.”

“Even in my little town of Lake Jackson, Texas, I’ve urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming.”

“Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks.” (about the Los Angeles riots of 1992)

“We are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men; it is hardly irrational.”

A photocopy of the hard copy June 15, 1992 Ron Paul newsletter shown on the Reason website has the headline “A Special Issue on Racial Terrorism,” and contains sentences such as:

“We now know, if we did not before, that we are under assault from thugs and revolutionaries who hate Euro-American civilization and everything it stands for.”

“Ten thousand stores and other buildings looted and burned, thousand beaten and otherwise seriously injured, 52 people dead. That was the toll of the Los Angeles riots in which we saw white men pulled from their cars and trucks and shot or brutally beaten. (In every case, the mob was not too enraged to pick the victim’s pocket.)”

Mr. Paul’s rather weak defense is that he didn’t write these words and did not even know they had appeared in the newsletter that bears his name. Of course, the supposedly “racist” articles only say things that are true, but the taboos against discussing black-on-white violence and black crime and welfare have only gotten stronger in the last two decades, so perhaps he can be excused for running away from those words.

Mr. Paul has not said much about race in his presidential runs but what he has said makes him sounds like a leftist. After the December 15 presidential debate in Iowa he was interviewed on FOX by Sean Hannity, who asked about the newsletters. Paul replied in a way that sounds as though he thinks blacks have high imprisonment rates because white “racism.”

“I’m the greatest defender of civil liberties especially when it comes to the inequities in our judicial system, you know, with blacks . . . the imprisonments from the drug wars, the number of blacks to get the death penalty . . . .”

A few days later, Mr. Paul appeared on The Jay Leno Show to say that Michele Bachmann “hates Muslims.” He was more charitable to Rick Santorum who merely “doesn’t like” Muslims. This implies that Mr. Paul, himself, just can’t get enough of Muslims.

In January 2008 he told CNN about his heroes:

“As a matter of fact, Rosa Parks is one of my heroes, Martin Luther King is a hero, because they practiced the libertarian principle of civil disobedience and nonviolence.”

In the past, Mr. Paul even granted VDARE.com an interview, but by 2011 he was promoting rather different views on immigration in his book Liberty Defined. Here are a few excerpts:

“It’s hard to hide the fact that resentment toward a Hispanic immigrant is more common than toward a European illegal immigrant.”

“One side says use the US Army, round them up ship them home. The other side says give them amnesty . . . . The first choice — sending twelve to fifteen million illegals home — isn’t going to happen and shouldn’t happen. . . if each case is looked at separately, we would find ourselves splitting up families and deporting some who have lived here for decades, if not their entire life, and who have never lived for any length of time in Mexico. This would hardly be a Good Samaritan approach to the problem. It would be incompatible with human rights.”

“Don’t punish third parties for not being keen to act as law enforcement agents in regard to illegal immigration. Blaming American employers and fining them for hiring an individual, directly or indirectly, with counterfeit identification strikes me as a compulsory servitude not permitted under the constitution. Determining who is legal or not is police and court function, not a responsibility of private business.”

“Arizona-type immigration legislation can turn out to be harmful. Being able to stop any American citizen under the vague charge of ‘suspicion’ is dangerous, even more so in the age of secret prisons and a stated position of assassinating American citizens if deemed a ‘threat,’ without charges ever being made.”

“[Immigrants] have a work ethic superior to many of our own citizens who have grown dependent on welfare and unemployment benefits.”

Mr. Paul’s website claims he is against amnesty but that, “As President, Ron Paul will encourage legal immigration by streamlining the entry process without rewarding lawbreakers.”

Such enthusiasm for more legal immigration was evident in Liberty Defined:

“With free markets and private property, a need for immigrant labor becomes obvious. Make it legal and easy with a generous visitor work program.”

This is almost the doctrinaire libertarian position on immigration.

Like every other Republican candidate, Mr. Paul has not touched affirmative action — yet in every debate, he rails against burdensome government regulations and intrusion into private lives. Quotas and racial preferences should be exhibit A for big government meddling, but Mr. Paul appears to be afraid of the issue.

A win in the January 3 Iowa primary will surly make the infamous newsletters center stage again. Mr. Paul will have to do better than the “I didn’t know” defense, and that defense is likely to take the form of hard-left rhetoric on race. Get ready to hold your noses.

For some reason, leftist nonsense on race will probably not lose him many votes — even among his racially aware white supporters. Once people decide that Mr. Paul is even a little bit on our side on race, they seem ready to forgive him just about anything.

My guess is that Ron Paul probably does have good instincts on race. He would not have hired a complete ideological alien to write those newsletters. However, he certainly does not care enough about race to blow a chance at the top job. If he ever became President he would have had to and dance backwards so frantically on race that he could never suddenly start pushing realistic policies — even if I am right about his instincts.

Whites looking for an advocate for our people are going to have wait.