Hot on the trail

I’m going to comment on this article:

http://www.haaretz.com/news/u-s-elections-2012/u-s-presidential-hopeful-ron-paul-isn-t-anti-israel-former-aide-says-1.403946

This raises an interesting question of how to assess conflicting reports. I don’t have the inside scoop. So how should an outsider like me evaluate the evidence when insiders disagree about what was said?

Responding to the column, CBS News quoted Ron Paul's spokesman Jesse Benton as saying that, "Eric Dondero is a disgruntled former staffer who was fired for performance issues." "He has zero credibility and should not be taken seriously," Benton added.

For all I know, that could be true. But it’s not convincing:

i) To say someone’s a disgruntled former employee is a cliché routinely used to preemptively discredit whistleblowers.

ii) Here’s one Ron Paul staffer dissing another Ron Paul staffer. But why assume Jesse Benton is credible while Eric Dondero is not?

iii) Why did it take 15 years to find out that Dondero had “performance issues”?

iv) By definition, a current employee will publicly defend his boss. Benton is like the White House press secretary.

The remarks by Dr. Leon Hadar, an Israeli and U.S. citizen, who used to be among Paul's foreign policy advisors during his 2008 presidential campaign, came a day after another former Paul aide, Eric Dondero, wrote in his blog that the presidential hopeful “wishes the Israeli state did not exist at all.”

 

"He will be glad to see the conflict resolved and he said it's the right of Israel to attack Iran if it thinks that is necessary - but it shouldn't expect the U.S. to clean the mess," he said, adding that Paul is "very familiar with Israel's history. I didn't hear his conversations with his former aide, but I personally have never heard him say anything against Israel or the Jews."

For all I know, Hadar is correct. However:

i) Notice the argument from silence.

ii) He was associated with Ron Paul for one year (2008), whereas Dondero was associated with Ron Paul for 15 years (or so I’ve read). So Dondero would be in a position to know far more about Ron Paul’s actual views than Hadar.

iii) And it’s not just Dondero. David Bahnsen also has inside information about Ron Paul and his inner clique.

There’s credible evidence that Ron Paul says one thing in private and another thing in public.

And it’s not just what he says. It’s also a question of what other speakers said at Von Mises Institute conferences (according to David Bahnsen). If Ron Paul attended these conferences year after year, that tells you where his sympathies lie.