The Campaign To Stop Ron Paul

The right has a new line of attack: some Muslim-Americans and Arab-Americans support him! Muslims supporting Republicans? The horror ... Look, it seems to me that Paul needs to do better at trying to distance himself from some others on the fringes, and his campaign is still a little not-prime-time in dealing with the usual suspects. But the general line of questioning - "Are you now and have you ever been an anti-Semite?" - is offensive. As Derb points out:

Has anyone else noticed that "Ron Paul" almost rhymes with "Goebbels," if you drop the "s"? And lookit has the same number of syllables!

I see no reason why the campaign should not return any money given by neo-Nazis who are subsequently identified as such. But Jonah is right that this whole thing tells us more about Paul's amateurism in rapid-response than anything else. It's also a function of some neocons' unfortunate tendency to cry anti-Semitism if anyone disagrees with them on foreign policy. Meanwhile, Wonkette offers a bipartisan "anti-Paultard" olive branch to RedState. Heh.