Flashback: How Rand Paul supporters mark Lincoln's passing

As the nation marks the 150th anniversary of the death of our 16th president tomorrow, it's worth noting what the fake libertarian and his neo-Confederate nut backers say about the Great Emancipator.

WASHINGTON –- In an interview with The Huffington Post, Sen. Rand Paul stoutly defended an aide who, as a radio shock jock in South Carolina, praised John Wilkes Booth, heaped scorn on Abraham Lincoln and wore a ski mask emblazoned with the stars and bars of the Confederate Battle Flag.

A couple days ago, news broke that Rand Paul's co-author and social media director Jack Hunter was once the Southern Avenger, a shock-jock radio personality who wore a red mask with the stars and bars criss-crossing his face. This Southern Avenger poured one out for John Wilkes Booth every May 10, Booth's birthday; was against Latino immigration, which he said would irrevocably change American culture; and complained about a "racial double standard" that kept whites from celebrating their racial heritage. Hunter was also a member of the League of the South, "whose ultimate goal is a free and independent Southern republic."

(...)

Hunter "is incredibly talented," Paul said in an interview with the Huffington Post, claiming he had known only "vaguely" about Hunter's past as the Southern Avenger. Yet he clearly seemed to know what the Southern Avenger was. “It was a shock radio job," Paul said. "He was doing wet T-shirt contests. But can a guy not have a youth and stuff? People try to say I smoked pot one time, and I wasn't fit for office.”

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113830/rand-paul-defends-jack-hunter-southern-avenger

But it wasn’t “neoconservatives” who forced Hunter into writing that he annually toasted Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth’s birthday. Or that he saw “that sick bearded bastard” as akin to “Hitler.”

The most important lesson to be gleaned from this episode is that Paul defended Hunter to the end. Indeed, by all accounts it was Hunter who decided to quit. He was not forced out.

Like his political idol, Rand Paul’s father and erstwhile presidential candidate Ron Paul, Hunter appears to be something of a coward. In 2008, when the full contents of the elder Paul’s newsletters were revealed to have been chock-full of racist (not to mention anti-Semitic and homophobic) paranoia, Paul tried to pass off the whole saga as the fault of unnamed ghostwriters. Rather than admit the obvious—that he was fully aware of what was going out, under his own name, to tens of thousands of subscribers—Paul played clueless.

Similarly, Hunter is now trying to claim that his neo-Confederate views are some sort of youthful indiscretion. It was a defense to which his former boss added sustenance, telling The Huffington Post, “But can a guy not have a youth and stuff? People try to say I smoked pot one time, and I wasn't fit for office.” But Hunter’s espousal of views that should have been out of fashion 160 years ago was not brief, childish dabbling but the stuff of a 15-year career that spanned well into his late 30s.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/07/23/what-rand-paul-aide-jack-hunter-and-his-resignation-say-about-his-boss.html

In one 2004 commentary, Hunter said Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth’s heart was “in the right place.”

“Although Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth’s heart was in the right place, the Southern Avenger does regret that Lincoln’s murder automatically turned him into a martyr,” he said in 2004.

He later wrote that he “raise[s] a personal toast every May 10 to celebrate John Wilkes Booth’s birthday.”

He also compared Lincoln to Saddam Hussein and suggested that the 16th president would have had a romantic relationship with Adolf Hitler if the two met.
more at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c40_1394249342#Cd9PagfPmTfAmdZo.99

But it was when Paul took on Hunter’s hateful writing about Abraham Lincoln, including the odious essay “John Wilkes Booth Was Right,” defending Lincoln’s assassination, that he gave us a picture of his troubling views of Lincoln, which display the toned-down influence of neo-Confederates. He starts off well enough. “I’m not a fan of secession,” Paul told Fineman. “I think the things he said about John Wilkes Booth are absolutely stupid. I think Lincoln was one of our greatest presidents.”

But then Paul presents a view of Lincoln that’s actually only a few degrees removed from the neo-Confederate revisionist history of our 16thpresident as a tyrannical hypocrite who was also a racist. Here’s what he said:

Do I think Lincoln was wrong is taking away the freedom of the press and the right of habeas corpus? Yeah. There were great people who were for emancipation. Lincoln came to his greatness. One Republican congressman described it as ‘on borrowed plumage.’ I love the description, because there were some great fighters [for emancipation] and Lincoln had to be pushed. But I’m not an enemy of Lincoln, like some who think he was an awful person.

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/11/rand_paul_completely_mangles_lincoln/