late? joining me is bob slum, democratic strategist and professor at nyu, and michael steele, former rnc chairman and now an msnbc news analyst. thank you both for being here to the. good to be with you, rev, merry christmas. same to you and no tuxedo tonight, mr. steele. i know. you were looking good, rev. thank you, sir. bob, is this 11th hour counterattack by newt going to work? i don t think it will work in part because he s doing it in the free media, the earn media, and he s having hundreds of thousands of dollars of negative ads thrown at hip. gingrich says it s not a negative attack and, of course, to me calling someone a moderate is a negative but i m not the target audience for this. the target audience is a group of very conservative voters in iowa. i think romney now sees a chance that he s going to win iowa and end this thing maybe early, and he wins even if he comes in second to ron paul because ron
i also put out a type of political business newsletter that sort of cord all these are areas, and it covered a lot of what was going on in washington. and in 1996 paul told the dallas morning news he was not a racist and said he was not evoking stereotypes when he wrote the columns. he said they were being taken out of context. ron paul s surge to number one in iowa has brought new attention to his record and to what his supporters believe in. joining me now is perry bacon jr., the politics editor of thegrio.com, msnbc contributor and bob franken, syndicated columnist. thanks for joining me tonight. perry can, ron paul really deny that he knew what was in these newsletters? one thing and all of us in public life may have said things we needed to apologize for that was distorted but to say you
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as an example. it wasn t shiny, but go ahead. in any case, that you re expr s expressing an agreement with him. there s such an implausibility, translate probably lying, to somebody having no knowledge whatsoever that this kind of you call it questionable material. i think it s unquestionably hateful was going out in his name that we really just have to sort of shove that aside and really form some opinions about his credibility, but there s also a danger. the new york times pointed out today paul consistently refuses to disallow those groups that do believe in that kind of thing, and what that means is that they get some encouragement. he s in effect making a deal with them to make them players in our system. that s kind of a faustian deal that he s making, but it s very dangerous, and if i may, let s not underestimate the danger of this kind of thing. we have a society right now that is angry, and it s a society
that for many reasons is angry about the way that the economic system is going and how certain people have manipulated it. a lot of people want simple answers about who it is they should be angry about, so now this is going to resonate a bit if you think about the history. we ve got people of color. we ve got jews. we ve got homosexuals, gays, that kind of thing and what does that remind you of? go back a generation, and you ll have your answer. perry, he attacked dr. king in these newsletters, israel. let me show you some of the quotes. martin luther king, the world class philanderer who beat up his paramores. israel is an aggressive, national, socialist state. aids patients should not be allowed to eat in restaurants because aids can be transmitted by saliva. this is all in the newsletters, but going to possible s point, which is more disturbing or as disturbing is some of his