The Orange Line: anatomy of a smear campaign

[TexMac]

The Orange Line: anatomy of a smear campaign

January 15, 2008 by formerbeltwaywonk


Here is an anatomy of the spread of the smear campaign against Ron Paul just prior to and on the crucial “king-making” New Hampshire primary day, January 8th (all times are EDT; the polls closed at 8 pm EDT):


January 7th, 7:33 pm — Matt Welch (Reason Magazine) discusses the plan to smear Ron Paul on New Hampshire primary day. In a later edit, Welch strikes out the actual TNR/Reason plan (to post the piece at midnight, the exact time the New Hampshire polls opened, and not post the actual newsletters until the afternoon of the primary) and substitutes “tommorrow afternoon”. But he failed to strike out Reason’s part in the plan: “More to come from here after the gong strikes midnight.”

January 8th, 12:01 AM — Jamie Kirchik’s anti-Paul hit piece, many weeks in preparation at the request of his boss Marty Peretz at The New Republic, and featuring featuring many out-of-context quotes from Paul’s old newsletter (which have long been public knowledge and which Paul long ago denied writing) and descriptions of Paul and his associates as “bigoted”, “racist”, “homophobic”, and “anti-Semtic”, etc. is posted at The New Republic.

11:03 AM – Daniel Koffler (Pajamas Media, formerly at Reason)
“A damning New Republic expose on Ron Paul shows the “libertarian” Republican candidate to be a racist, a homophobe and an anti-Semite. Will his diehard supporters continue to defend a man who called Martin Luther King a gay pedophile? Daniel Koffler, a former Paul sympathizer, has a compendium of the Texas congressman’s creepiest hits, pulled straight from his decades-old newsletter.”

3:30 pm — Andrew Sullivan (The Atlantic, formerly editor of The New Republic) — “They are a repellent series of tracts, full of truly appalling bigotry.”

3:46 pm — David Wiegel (Reason) Wiegel praises Kirchik’s piece as “explosive” and after a brief converstation with a harried Paul, grossly mischaracterizes Ron Paul’s position as “Paul’s position is basically that he wrote the newsletters he stands by and someone else wrote the stuff he has disowned.”

3:48 pm — Nick Gillespie (Reason) “I’ve got to say that The New Republic article detailing tons of racist and homophobic comments from Paul newsletters is really stunning. As former reason intern Dan Koffler documents here, there is no shortage of truly odious material that is simply jaw-dropping.”

4:43 pm — David Bernstein (Volokh Conspiracy/George Mason University) “..it’s disturbing in and of itself that the kind of people who write such things would want to associate themselves with Paul’s name, and the kind of people who enjoy reading such things would subscribe to these newsletters because they admire Paul.” Here’s David’s web page at GMU.

(before 5 pm) — Arnold Kling (Econglog/George Mason University) — Repeats the worst quotes out of context and without explanation.

5:17 pm — Dale Carpenter (Volokh Conspiracy/University of Minnesota) – “A damning indictment of Ron Paul.”

Oddly enough, all these people with the exception of the tardiest, Dale Carpenter, live or work near the Orange Line subway (Metro) west of the capitol building in Washington, D.C. On the Orange Line, with occasional short side trips on some other lines, you can get to The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, Reason Magazine, George Mason University, The Federal Triangle, Cato Institute, Foggy Bottom, Dupont Circle (Red Line), and a number of other homes and work sites of beltway media, politicians, bureaucrats, and “libertarians.” I don’t know how many of these people actually ride the D.C. Metro, but for fun and convenience let’s call this group of smear artists the “Orange Line Mafia”. This group of media pundits and bloggers has developed a large following among actual libertarians because they are an integral part of D.C. social circles and darlings of the mainstream media, who often “link” to the blogs of these “libertarians” from their various media formats. Libertarians who watch or read MSM thus often first discover “libertarianism” on the net in the writings of The Atlantic, Reason, Cato, Volokh Conspiracy, and other Orange Line Mafia outlets, and think that they are representative of people who actually value liberty.


If a person cared about liberty, why would they be eager to mindlessly repeat smears about the most popular libertarian candidate in decades on the very day of the most crucial “king-making” primary in the United States? Yet that is exactly what a number of popular “libertarian” bloggers did that day. The Ron Paul Newsletters are voluminous and even a small fraction of them could not possibly be read in the very few hours that passed between the posting of the actual newsletters (the afternoon of the 8th) and the smear campaigners’ posts (also the afternoon of the 8th). All of these “hit and run” blog posts, except Kirchik’s original, must then be based on Kirchik’s piece rather than on actual reading and analysis of the newsletters. Clearly the purpose of these posts was not to initiate a thoughtful discussion of the newsletters, it was to spin libertarian voters on the most crucial election day short of the November general elections.

Read here for more analysis of why beltway “libertarians” engage in anti-libertarian activism.

N.B. I’ve tested all these links; they point to the referenced smear propagations as of the time I posted. If any later go missing, try looking for them in the Internet archive and let me know in the comments, thanks.

[TexMac]

Article from here, in case it is unclear:

http://formerbeltwaywonk.wordpress.com/

[TexMac]

I posted this in the comment thread:

Tex MacRae Says:
January 16, 2008 at 5:49 pm You missed one. Here’s Brian Doherty pursuing Ron Paul at his Tonight Show with Jay Leno appearance the night before the New Hampshire primary:

I failed, alas, to nab Paul in the scrum outside as he was getting in his car (surrounded by mostly young fans vying for photo ops) to fly back to New Hampshire. I was unable, then, to get any personal reactions to the Kirchick New Republic piece criticizing him (apparently–it’s not publicly available yet, so I haven’t read it) for anti-MLK and anti-gay slurs from years back. For more on which, see Matt Welch’s post below (with loads of other reason Ron Paul links.)

So, if Doherty had been successful, he would’ve been able to sandbag Ron Paul with a hit piece that hadn’t even been published yet.

[jawrightbiz]

I am sure the right people will make use of this information. Thank you for putting it together

[billyjoeallen]

more from former beltwaywonk:

How can one not think of conspiracy theories having just observed an improbably simultaneous media attack on Ron Paul the day of the New Hampshire primary? A remarkably successful attack that made him plunge from 14% in the polls to an 8% actual vote? After weeks where we heard little about Paul from the mass media and beltway “libertarian” bloggers? TNR from the left, Fox News and talk radio from the right, and piling on from beltway “libertarians” who made a point of loudly repeating the TNR smears and dumping Ron Paul on the day of the primary. Your eyes and ears did not deceive you, all this happened. It is not the result of a criminal conspiracy, but if one uses “conspiracy” as a metaphor for social networks and economic incentives, there is a strong sense in which conspiracy theories accurately, if metaphorically, explain what happened.

The reality behind the conspiratorial metaphor is the social networking between denizens of the Beltway, who sport a wide variety of political labels but are, relative to the rest of the country, a monoculture. I lived there. I went to these parties. These denizens range from the journalists who report the mass media news to various think tank and university scholars at the Cato Institute, George Mason University, and so on. They study Ayn Rand, then marry Andrea Mitchell and testify against tax cuts. Vast amounts of federal money, that stuff that is taken out of your paycheck with such automatic ease, flow into the Beltway area. Directly and indirectly, almost every person who lives in or near the Beltway depends on the very income tax that Ron Paul declared he would abolish — with no replacement!

Many of these paycheck vampires call themselves “libertarians” and inspire us with their libertarian rhetoric to support them with our attention, our blog hits, and our tuition money as well as the tax money that already funds them or their friends. But at the first sign of political incorrectness, all these below-the-Beltway “libertarians” have dumped Ron Paul like yesterday’s garbage. Now they can rest easy that they will still be invited to the parties thrown by their lobbyist and government employee and contractor friends, who for a second or two got worried by all those Google searches that Ron Paul might have some influence, resulting in some of them losing their jobs (end the income tax with no replacement?! The guy is obvioiusly a kook, and we don’t invite the supporters of kooks to our parties!). Now everybody around the Beltway can go back to partying at the taxpayer’s expense. All the money will keep flowing in, hooray!

The lesson millions of young libertarians have now learned from our mass media and our beltway “libertarians”? Libertarian electioneering is futile. Voting is futile. Democracy is futile. It’s hip to be “libertarian.” But anybody who actually wants liberty is a kook, as can be proven by their association with kooks. Beltway wonks posing as “libertarians” are happy to write things to inflame your hopes for liberty that they don’t really mean. Then they make sure that we elect the politicians their friends want — the ones that will enslave your future to pay for full social security for Baby Boomers. The ones that will send you off to foreign lands to kill and die. Not only the journalists who hang out with the government bureaucrats and lobbyists, and not only the politicians who talk sweet while they drain your paycheck and kill your fellow human beings, but even the beltway “libertarians” are happy to let a whole new generation of libertarians go down the tubes in order to keep their Beltway friends happy.

[kellann]

The more I read about this the more it sounds like

T reason

[billyjoeallen]

And this:

by Phil Manger
(Libertarian)
I guess we should have expected it.

The Beltway libertarians, those polished public intellectuals at Cato and Reason, have been falling all over themselves the past few days in an effort to distance themselves from Ron Paul following the "outing" of his old newsletters last week by The New Republic. Not that they were ever that close to begin with. The Cato gang never liked Dr. Paul, and the folks at Reason only warmed up to him after his campaign began to catch fire on the internet. Now, their blogs are full of I-told-you-sos, denunciations, and warnings of dire consequences for libertarianism.

Typical of these was David Boaz, Cato's executive vice-president, who told the world that "...over the past few months a lot of people have been asking why writers at the Cato Institute seemed to display a lack of interest in or enthusiasm for the Paul campaign. Well, now you know." Even Radley Balko, a Reason editor and former Cato policy analyst whose research on police misconduct made him one of the few shining lights among the Beltway libertarians in recent years, has joined the lynch mob. You can find links to dozens of other similar comments here.

Interestingly, all of them say they don't believe Dr. Paul is really a racist, and most of them say they believe him when he says he didn't write the articles in question. In fact, their real target seems to be something they call paleolibertarianism, a branch of libertarianism that has its center of gravity at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. And the man they really seem to loathe is the institute's president, Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. Ron Paul is merely collateral damage.

I should point out at this point that I really have no firsthand knowledge of any of the details of the mutual animosity that exists between the Beltway libertarians and the paleos. I only know that it exists and that it runs deep. I was a libertarian activist from the mid-'60s until the early '80s. I then decided to get a life and, except for an occasional blog post or attendance at a meeting, I was pretty much out of it for the next quarter century. It was my son who urged me to support Ron Paul in his run for President. (I didn't deliberately raise him to be a libertarian. Do you suppose it's genetic?) I did a lot of Googling of Ron Paul's name, and...well, here I am.

So, what about those newsletters? According to The New Republic article, the newsletters reveal "decades worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays". Actually, that's a gross overstatement. It's more like a careless phrase or choice of words here and there — sometimes very careless, and sometimes even mean.

What the newsletters remind me of is the "gold bug" marketing in the early '70s. The "gold bugs" — those who believed that the dollar was destined to continue to lose value — were a mixed bag: conspiracists, libertarians, John Birchers, survivalists (of both the Left and the Right), racialists, and some who just wanted to turn a quick profit. Following the dollar's devaluation in 1971 a number of businesses and newsletters appeared on the market to capitalize on the uncertainty of the times. They sold their wares, whether precious metals or newsletter subscriptions, by instilling fear and serving up red meat to the gold bugs. I remember attending one precious metals "seminar" in 1974. A black couple was sitting near me. When the speaker got to the part about riots in the cities and a breakdown of civil authority, I could see that the couple were extremely uncomfortable. They left before the end of the presentation.

For whatever reason, Ron Paul has a very bankable name in that market. The International Harry Schultz Letter, the granddaddy of all the gold bug newsletters, prominently features a plug from Dr. Paul on its webpage. So it would make sense that a newsletter bearing Paul's name, aimed at gold bugs or their like, would be profitable.

So, did Ron Paul write that awful stuff posted on TNR's website? I’m a former writer and editor and also a former college professor who got to be pretty good at sniffing out plagiarism in student papers, and I have to say I very much doubt it. It isn’t at all like Ron Paul’s style of writing (you can go to the Mises Institute website, where there is an extensive archive of Dr. Paul’s writings, if you don’t believe me), and there’s nothing in his voting record over 10 terms in Congress to suggest those are his views. I don't find it at all implausible that someone would use his name to sell subscriptions to a newsletter written and edited by others.

But I agree with Alex Wallenwein and Bill Westmiller that we need to know who did write that objectionable material so that we can move on. Otherwise, this stuff will come up again and again.

However, I am not so naive as to think that this will mollify the Beltway libertarians. In their writings on this controversy, I've detected a barely suppressed undercurrent of glee, as if they're trying to keep from shouting "Aha! Gotcha now!" They say they are concerned about what all this is doing to the reputation of libertarianism — although, it seems to me they're more concerned about what it's doing to their own standing in Georgetown — but I think they doth protest too much.

If the Beltway libertarians are really concerned about the reputation of libertarianism, let them take a look at what they're saying about Ron Paul over on the Left. Although they like his antiwar, pro-freedom message, a lot of the bloggers over there don't care for the fact that he's a libertarian. You see, they equate libertarianism with the Cato Institute. And to them, Cato is just another D. C. think tank laboring in the service of the corporate elites.

[TonySutton]

Oddly, the TNR piece hit Drudge Report around 3-4pm also. I do not know how to research when it hit but I was at work and I am pretty sure there is a thread in this forum that would date time stamp the approximate time it hit Drudge.

Here is the thread:

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...ghlight=drudge

[billyjoeallen]

and this by me (not as good):

by Billy Joe
(Libertarian)
I traded a few emails with Reason Magazine's Matt Welch recently.

Unlike almost everybody, I actually read reason magazine, at least I did until now. I have a copy next to the computer here as I type. I check the Reason website about a dozen times a day.

When the old newsletter non-story broke on the day of the New Hampshire primary, Reason very abruptly quit singing his praises and joined the MSM howls of condemnation.

It was BECAUSE of their coverage on Dr. Paul that I suspect an attempted swiftboating.

Reason has covered Dr. Paul often and fairly until the TNR story broke the day of the NH primary. The mainstream pack dogs smelled blood and Reason, far from fending them off, was ringing the dinner bell. Cursory critism was directed at Kirchick for opportunism, and then the wholesale abondonment of presumption of innocense.

It was shocking to me that Reason was taking the same angle as everyone else instead of seriously questioning the relevance of the story and the direction of the spin. I read the newsletters. They were not good, but not terribly damning either and wouldn't have been news at all if they carried the name of a less reputable person. Dr. Paul's sterling reputation is what makes this bemish stand out. McCain actually says stuff on camera worse than some of the material found in the Ron Paul reports, but Reason treats the "revelation" as if it had the same magnitude of finding a corpse in Dr. Paul's trunk!

Reason's justification for hanging Paul out to dry seems to be this: They are trying to protect the reputation of libertarianism by crucifying the most poular and influential libertarian in our lifetimes! You see, he lent his name (for profit) to a publication that didn't print church hymns and therefore he must be burnt at the steak. Trading on one's own name would seem to be a libertarian idea, but the Reason gang is throwing fuel on the pyre and basking in the glow.

Why? Why would Matt, Nick and Radley join the ugly chant that "someone's gotta pay?" These guys are smart enought to know that witchhunts don't stop when a witch is found.

A journalist has two main responsibilities: to report the facts, and to determine which facts to report. The facts should be timely, relevant and newsworthy. At best the old newsletters only met one of the three criteria.

Reason readers count on a pro-liberty perspective, but Reason showed none in this case. If I was on staff, I would have written something like this: "Attempted Smear Greeted by Yawns" or "Skelletons in Congressman's closet finally found."

The media has enormous power to frame the debate. Putting facts into context is as important as accuracy. Reason failed it's readers, the public and libertarianism spectacularly, by joining in the feeding frenzy and even leading the charge.

Reason's rationale of joining the bloodsport to "protect libertarianism" falls so flat they can't even look us in the eyes while they mutter it. Assuming the absolute worst that Dr. Paul wrote every ugly word in those newsletters himself and believed them in his heart of hearts, he would still be by far the most libertarian candiate in this election and every previous one since 1988 when he ran the first time.

For Reason's rationale to have any merit at all, they would have us believe that any candidate pragmatic enough to get elected was insufficiently idealistic enough to be worthy of office. It can reasonably be asked if Reason serves the establishment more than libertarianism by giving us false representation in the fourth estate and drowning out smaller, more legitimate voices for freedom.

Simply put: I don't like them or trust them anymore. I don't believe you should either.Reason has every right to take what they consider the high road, but to me it is a stupid self-righteousness.

According to Reason, Ron Paul is aligned with Lew Rockwell who is aligned with Pat Bucchanon who is aligned with somebody somewhere who is a racist.

How many Kevin Bacon degrees of separation are required before someone is "pure" enough to be a legitimate spokesman for libertarianism??

Again I think their strategy and/or their morals are slef-defeating. It's like Groucho Marx's line that "I would never wan't to belong to a club that would have me as a member."

The holy reasonoids are claiming that the politically successful strategy persued by Paul is too pragmatic for them to support. As an alternative they offer...nothing.

[billyjoeallen]

by Billy Joe
(Libertarian)
Update: see bottom for correspondence with Matt Welch

"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act." -George Orwell

The highest circulation libertarian periodical in America has joined the racist smear dog-pile on Ron Paul, or maybe they started it. It seems pretty damn suspicious Kirchick went out of his way to absolve The "libertines" at Reason and the "urbane libertarians" at Cato from any connection to Dr. No in his original TNR hitpiece. CATO is a beltway think tank. Both Cato and Reason have said from the beginning that Dr. Paul "can't win," so now they have a huge incentive to try to make their predictions come true. Funny also how the newsletters were unearthed from the Univesity of Kansas library, the university where Charles Koch, CATO funder, is a major patron.

They also guarantee themselves facetime on every cable news program in the country where they can spin their cowardly abandonment of the most pro-freedom candidate in decades as independence. They are so pure, that for them any libertarian candidate pragmatic enough to get elected is not idealistic enough to be worthy of office. The are shocked, SHOCKED to discover that the dumb things printed in old Ron Paul newsletters--things they have been aware of for months if not years-- were actually not ALL of the dumb things.

What's different about the new revelations? The context! Candidate Paul is gaining traction, so now his decades-old, well aired editorial lapse of judgement is evidence that he is dangerous, not quaint. But wait, if he can't win, why is he so dangerous?

Letting a bunch of xenophobic rot appear in his old newsletters actually does reveal something about Ron Paul. It reveals that he faults on the side of trusting people too much, rather than not enough. As a publisher, he foolishly trusted his editor to actually edit. Letting this go on for years is evidence that he is too tolerant of people and ideas he does not agree with. He has insufficient support for the thought police that keep this country on the track it is on. He naively believes that exposing people to unpopular ideas is beneficial, not harmful and that people can detect faulty resoning for themselves.

It's a good thing he can't win.

"Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good."

-Ecclesiastes 9:18

RonPaulisWrong.Com

Matt:

Thanks for the correction. I will make the approriate
changes.

I look forward to Reason covering the story of the
NAACP defending Dr. Paul.

-Joe

--- Matt Welch <matt.welch@reason.com> wrote:

> Dear Joe,
>
> Thanks for the e-mail.
>
> We didn't do an about-face on Paul, we aren't based
> in New York, and
> judging by the response to our work so far from
> Paul-supporting
> libertarians, there's a ton of people out there who
> *do* find those
> newsletters newsworthy to some degree.
>
> Best,
> Matt
>
> William Allen wrote:
> > This total about face on Ron Paul doesn't seem
> > reasonable. What candidate can live up to your
> > standards? Why are you alienating so many of your
> > readers?? What other candidate could you possibly
> say
> > supports "free minds and free markets"?
> >
> > I am starting to think that Adolf Ghouliani got to
> you
> > guys somehow. You guys are in New York, right?
> >
> > BTW, How the hell did Julie get the endorsement
> from
> > Pat Robertson?? A thrice married gun grabbing big
> > government pro-choice New Yorker! I am not a
> paranoid
> > Truther, but something smells sinister here.
> >
> > These old newsletters are not going to get
> traction
> > because it's not newsworthy, timely or relavent
> and
> > you are discrediting yourselves as a legitimate
> > libertarian news organization.
> >
> > I trust Dr. Paul when he says he is not a racist-
> more
> > than I trust you when you claim to be libertarian.
> >
> > -Joe Allen