What Rand Paul’s libertarian hypocrisy reveals about the GOP’s giant race problem
"And now, a book he wrote called “The Tea Party Goes to Washington” has come under renewed scrutiny, owing to the fact that it includes one fake quote from Thomas Jefferson after another. This is so common on the right, however, that people hardly even mention it anymore. Aside from sending out chain emails every year with a bunch of bogus quotes that make the founders sound like they were early members of the John Birch Society, they have anointed a known hoaxter by the name of David Barton as their official Founders’ historian.
In a rare moment of right wing integrity, Barton’s publisher withdrew his book once it was discovered that he’d just made stuff up. No word on whether Paul’s publisher will feel compelled to do the same. But then, they weren’t bothered when it was revealed that Paul’s Tea Party book was co-written by a close associate by the name of Jack Hunter, also known as “The Southern Avenger”, so why would this little problem cause them to have second thoughts about distributing the book now?
You’ll remember that the Southern Avenger was a right-wing shock jock and member of the League of the South, a racist group which is known for such statements by its leading members as, “somebody needs to say a good word for slavery — where in the world are the Negroes better off today than in America?” (Tea party hero and Sovereign Citizen Cliven Bundy had similar thoughts about whether African Americans were better off as slaves picking cotton.) Hunter himself left quite a trail of racist sentiment behind including musing that he thought Abraham Lincoln was “one of the worst figures in American history.”
Yes, like his father before him, Rand Paul has consorted with a number of neo-Confederate white supremacists (is there any other kind)"
