Anything beyond "it looks too good to be true"?
There's an air of confusion and hesitancy about the Paul campaign that is worrying me. The orinje thread is right about one thing; the game is getting dirty and Paul's people don't have the street smarts to hit back. They need to be raising hell. The video didn't come from a Paul supporter; everything about it is wrong. The thread and the video point to someone with insider knowledge of Huntsman's campaign. Huntsman either has some shady characters working for him or he is being manipulated by a third party with a pipeline into his campaign. It is possible that we are looking at dirty tricks by Gingrich and his neocon buddies. He stands to gain the most from smearing Huntsman and Paul, and he is scummy and devious enough to invent crap like this.
Even if he is being played, Huntsman is at fault. He capitalized on the video and didn't do any fact checking. The orinje thread was posted on his website. How could that have happened? It's up to Huntsman to prove that his campaign workers aren't involved. Starting with the question, does he have a site administrator named Abigail? That should be easy to check. It's the type of information that somebody in another campaign would be privy to but not a kid somewhere.
The fake video story is designed to lend credence to the newsletter hype that Paul is associated with racists and doesn't rein in his people. That tells you something about who made it. And now we have the followup: the orinje thread. I get the feeling Paul's people are afraid to pounce on the oiinje thread out of fear that some young supporter might be involved. It doesn't feel right. I've read thousands of posts by Paul supporters, and they tend to be well written - he attracts brainy people. The spelling and punctuation errors feel all wrong. A Paul supporter savvy enough to plant this would strive to be believable and thus would avoid obvious statements and uneducated writing. You'd only write a piece that reads like this if you're trying to impersonate a kid in a basement, someone that you presume is not too bright. In other words, it sounds like someone outside the Paul camp trying to imitate a stereotypical "Paulbot" rather than a real Paul supporter trying to imitate campaign workers.
Can't rule out the possibility is that it's a real thread however. It's so wrong and so incredibly stupid that it could be real. People write very sloppily when they know each other well and are communicating informally, and they do get caught on the open mike sometimes. There's some insider language, the "white horse" thing. But I am taken aback by the nasty tone, particularly the gloating about Paul people being on the defensive and not having "a hint of street smarts." That's language that would not come naturally to a Paul supporter. They don't even know they lack street smarts. And why would Huntsman's people hate Paul so intensely? Because of a little tweet joke? Really?
I say challenge Huntsman to prove that these things didn't originate with his campaign. Put him on the defense. If the orinje thread proves to be fake, look for a way to drive a stake into Gingrich.
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