No campaign can be held responsible for all who contribute money to them but it is customary, once an inappropriate donation is discovered, to return the money and disavow the contributor. Ron Paul has chosen to keep the money donated by a Neo-Nazi.
There has been a lot of crowing lately by the supporters of Ron Paul about the amount of money he has raised. Evidence would suggest that at least part of the ability of the Paul campaign to raise money is that they are willing to take money from anyone -- no matter how sleazy.
An investigation by the
LoneStarTimes.com has shown very convincing evidence that American neo-Nazi/White-Supremacist Don Black, owner and operator of the
Stormfront website (identified as the number one English-language racist and hate site on the Internet) has made a contribution to the Ron Paul for President campaign.
Indeed the Stormfront website has links at the bottom of its main page that allow like-minded individuals to contribute money to the Paul campaign as well.
While it is not fair to hold a candidate responsible for all who give his or her campaign money, it is reasonable to expect Paul to distance himself from a group after being informed of an embarrassing contribution. But five days after the contribution was made public, Paul spokesman Jesse Benton told the LononeStarTimes.com that he still did not know if the campaign would return Black's money.
When asked what the campaign intended to do about the matter
Benton said:"At this time, I cannot say that we will be rejecting Mr. Black’s contribution, but I will bring the matter to the attention of our campaign director again, and expect some sort of decision to be made in coming days."
Asked if the campaign would at least block fundraising links from Stormfront's IP address? Again, Benton said, he'd have to bring up the idea with the campaign director.
Since that interview with Benton, more than two weeks have passed and there is still no sign from the Paul camp of either returning the money or distancing themselves from Black or the racist contributors who have followed the links from his hate site to give money to Paul.
This raises several disturbing questions: First, what does it say about the ethics of a candidate willing to accept tainted money from these bigots and not criticize them publicly for their ideology? And second, what is it about the Paul platform that makes this sort of person think that Paul represents their kind of people?
We will anxiously await further development in this under-reported story.
