How Romney Hijacked 4 Ron Paul Delegations in Tampa

If you want a lesson in dirty politics this is a good primer.
HT: Molonlabe70

Ron Paul chairs hearings on monetary policy 9-21-2012

Dr. Paul chairs congressional hearings on monetary policy with Jim Grant and Lew Lehrman as principal witnesses. The Democratic members of the committee didn't even bother to show up.

David Stockman on TARP, Gold, the Fed, Ron Paul and Reagan

GOP promises to maybe talk about returning to a gold standard

The gold standard has returned to mainstream U.S. politics for the first time in 30 years, with a “gold commission” set to become part of official Republican party policy.

Drafts of the party platform, which it will adopt at a convention in Tampa Bay, Florida, next week, call for an audit of Federal Reserve monetary policy and a commission to look at restoring the link between the dollar and gold.

Read the rest here.

Ron Paul's presence to be felt in Tampa

Despite the delegates he won during the Republican presidential primary season, Ron Paul won't be speaking at next week's Republican convention in Tampa, Fla.

But his presence will be felt there -- whether it's his supporters who will be flocking to the city or his son Rand, who will be speaking at the convention.

And there's also the possibility of a video tribute to the Texas congressman.

"We're told there's something special in the works on Tuesday paying tribute to Ron Paul," said Jesse Benton, Paul's national campaign manager.

Read the rest here.

Ron Paul gains convention delegates in deal with Romney

GOP officials and the Mitt Romney campaign have cut a deal with Texas Rep. Ron Paul's campaign to allow some — though not all — of Paul's delegates from Louisiana and Massachusetts to be seated at the Republican National Convention. The status of Maine's delegates remains unsettled.

The compromise would appear to avert a potential public clash with Paul supporters during the convention's opening day Monday.

Read the rest here.

Bernanke Calls Ron Paul Audit Bill "A Nightmare"

WASHINGTON U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Wednesday rebutted Republican lawmakers pushing a bill that would give Congress the ability to review monetary policy decisions, saying it could compromise central bank independence.

Bernanke said it would be a "nightmare scenario" if politicians decided to second-guess monetary policy.

"That is very concerning because there's a lot of evidence that an independent central bank that makes decisions based strictly on economic considerations and not based on political pressure will deliver lower inflation and better economic results in the longer term," Bernanke told the U.S. House of Representatives' Financial Services Committee.

Read the rest here.

Ron Paul Comes Up Short in Nebraska

The failure to gain a plurality of delegates means that it will be all but impossible to put Ron Paul's name in nomination from the floor of the GOP convention. While no one with even one foot planted in the real world believed Dr. Paul was going to magically dethrone Mitt Romney, such a move would have given him a 15 minute speaking slot and it would have forced some open debate on topics the GOP would rather not discuss.

I still expect some fireworks at the convention. But they will not be as bright.

Ron Paul Chairs Hearings On Fractional Reserve Banking

Romney Hijacks Massachusetts Delegation

It looks like Mitt Romney wins elections the old fashioned way... he steals them. Here in brief is the story on the Mass delegation. Ron Paul supporters read the rule book (something Romney's people apparently didn't bother with) and made sure they had enough people elected to the state convention to take it over. Once in control of the state convention (legally) they packed the state delegation to the national convention in Tampa with Ron Paul supporters.

Not surprisingly Romney's people cried foul. They pointed out, fairly enough, that he won the popular vote in the Bay State's primary. But what they failed to grasp is that state conventions are often the last word in party rules and the assigning of delegates. Embarrassed to have lost his home state to a cleverly organized coup de main he promptly set about figuring out how to retake the state delegation. Except that he couldn't, at least not legally.

So Romney being Romney, he simply ordered it to be done and so it has been. A Republican committee assigned to oversee things like delegate selection disqualified 17 Ron Paul delegates from the Bay State. Their rational; the delegates had failed to deliver in a timely manner a sworn affidavit, signed under penalty of perjury, promising to vote for Romney. The only problem being that nowhere is there any rule requiring such an affidavit. Nor has such an affidavit ever been required in the past.

The GOP chair would not explain why affidavits were required this year. He also declined attempts by the Boston Globe to interview him. But according to the Globe the chairman sent out an email saying that Governor Romney had the right to reject delegates for "just cause."

Oh really? Where is that right found in the GOP's bylaws and rules?

Giving credit where it is due, Romney has reversed Ron Paul's brilliant (and legal) take over of a large part of the Massachusetts delegation. My only quibble is that he did it using the playbook straight from Tammany Hall.

"It doesn't matter how many votes you win. What matters is who counts the votes."
-Joseph Stalin

Ron Paul 'Revolution' strikes at GOP state parties

Ron Paul’s third campaign for president may not lead to the Texas Congressman being nominated at the Republican Convention in Tampa this August -- notwithstanding a lawsuit filed by supporters in attempt to make that happen -- but, from Maine to Alaska, the “Paul Revolution” has swept state Republican parties.

Out of the national spotlight, Paul activists have mastered obscure local party rules to win key positions of power at state conventions, infiltrating the Republican establishment across the country, including in the key swing states of Iowa and Nevada.

n Massachusetts, they even beat out many prominent pro-Mitt Romney supporters to win spots as Romney delegates. They are informally bound by party rules to vote for Romney still, but the open secret in both parties, is no one is really bound – one of the issues at the heart of the Paul supporters’ lawsuit against the national party.

Read the rest here.

Ron Paul Wins Iowa

Ron Paul won Iowa! At the Iowa GOP convention over the weekend, supporters of the Texas libertarian walked away with 23 of the state’s 28 national convention delegates. Under state Republican rules, those delegates are unbound, meaning they can vote for Congressman Paul in August in Tampa, Fla., if they please. It’s another example of how Paul’s strategy of getting his people organized at the grass-roots level has (somewhat) paid off in the end.

Read the rest here.

And Dr. Paul also raised another nearly $2 million for his campaign last month, AFTER HE CONCEDED THE NOMINATION. Not bad.

Joe Scarborough: Why I voted for Ron Paul

I operate on instinct. So I should not have been surprised by my own gut reaction to the absentee ballot that lay before me on the kitchen table.

I scanned the list for Republican primary candidates and let instinct take over.

Mitt Romney? Not on your life. A big government Republican who will say anything to get elected.

Rick Santorum? No way. A pro-life statist who helped George W. Bush double the national debt.

Newt Gingrich? Ideologically unmoored. A champion of liberty one day, a central planner the next.

Ron Paul? Yep. I quickly checked his name and moved on to a far more complex task: fixing my daughter a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Read the rest here.

Santorum braces for convention battle with Ron Paul

Rick Santorum plans to lead a strong pro-Romney effort at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., that can serve as a counterweight in case Representative Ron Paul and his supporters “are looking for a platform fight,” he said in an interview that was broadcast on Sunday.

Mr. Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator, had sharp differences with Mitt Romney when both were seeking the presidential nomination, but since bowing out of the race, Mr. Santorum has thrown his support behind the presumptive nominee and has papered over their differences.

The same cannot be said of Mr. Paul, the Texas libertarian who is still technically a candidate and who will be bringing  more than 200 delegates to Tampa. Mr. Santorum, appearing on the ABC News program “This Week,” suggested that fireworks with the Paul group were a distinct possibility.

Asked about his own interest in influencing the Republican platform, Mr. Santorum said, “I like the platform that we have right now.”

He then added: “I’m concerned that Ron Paul and some of his supporters out there are looking for a platform fight. And I want to make sure that we have strong, principled conservatives there who stood with me in our primary fight to go there and counterbalance the effect of the Paul folks.”

Mr. Santorum, who often sparred with Mr. Paul in the Republican debates, did not elaborate on what shape a platform fight might take.

Read the rest here.

Louisiana GOP Convention Gets Ugly

Don't you wish you'd been in Shreveport Saturday?

For once in your life, the answer should be yes. The Republican State Convention there offered raw passion, intrigue and even a few broken bones. They say politics is Louisiana's favorite spectator sport. In its current form, the GOP could fill the Superdome.

The purpose Saturday was to select the 46 delegates the state party will send to the Republican National Convention in Tampa. Since Mitt Romney appears to have the presidential nomination sewn up, this should have been a pretty sleepy affair.

We knew beforehand that it would not be, however, because Ron Paul supporters, having turned out in force for caucuses that other voters largely overlooked, constituted a majority of those present. Meanwhile party officials were determined that Louisiana would line up behind Romney.

Read the rest here.

Louisiana GOP Convention May Split Over Ron Paul Delegates

Saturday's Louisiana Republican State Convention in Shreveport promises to be a political donnybrook for the ages. A fight pitting the Ron Paul forces against the rest of the party is likely to lead the convention to split into two competing meetings that will proceed to put together two, somewhat different Louisiana delegations to send the Republican National Convention in Tampa in August, and leaving it to the national GOP's Contest Committee to sort it out.

The only question seems to be how soon after the convention convenes at 10 the breakup will occur and a rolling wall in the hall at the Shreveport Convention Center will unfold, turning one convention into two and separating the 111 Paul delegates, from the 69 Santorum, Romney and other delegates, including state Party Chair Roger Villere and the rest of the party leadership.

Read the rest here.

Romney Campaign attempts to nullify Paul delegates in Massachusetts.

MARLBOROUGH —Dozens of Ron Paul backers showed up at a state Republican Party meeting last night to protest what they say is a manipulation of power aimed at decreasing their influence at the party’s national convention.

A 14-member GOP committee charged with allocating delegates to the convention held a closed meeting at the Holiday Inn to discuss whether three delegates and three alternates selected at the Fifth Congressional District caucus should be invalidated.

None of the Romney-backed delegates won any of the six seats for the district, which as a result of redistricting will include Framingham, Natick, Sudbury and Southborough in 2013. It presently is anchored by Lowell, Lawrence and Haverhill.

One of the unsuccessful members of the Romney slate challenged the results.

Read the rest here.

Ron Paul revolution is well beyond the fringe

After a lengthy analysis of the Ron Paul influence evident at the Minnesota GOP Convention May 18-19 in St. Cloud ("Libertarian surge remakes state GOP," May 20), the burning question for the Star Tribune Editorial Board was whether "a caucus-based political system that magnifies populist tides [and enabled Paul supporters to dominate the state convention] serves this state well."

Couple that with a harsher Washington Post piece published in full online ("The party of Ron Paul?" May 24) -- which labeled recently adopted planks in the Iowa Republican Party platform "wacky" and "nutty" and gleefully anticipated "a few highly visible fights" erupting over "Paulite positions in the national platform" -- and it's evident the Strib is a more than a little confused about what the Ron Paul revolution is all about.

Let me do what I can to clarify.

First, let's understand what a "movement" or a "revolution" is. All movements -- the Pat Robertson Republican coup in the 1980s, gay rights, women's suffrage, civil rights and, yes, the Ron Paul movement -- follow a common pattern.

Movements all begin at the margins with people who have little or nothing to lose. Unsuccessful movements never expand beyond the sloganeering fringe. Successful movements -- those with an intellectual and moral basis -- mature to attract a mainstream following.

Read the rest here.
From blog reader MolonLabe70

Five things Ron Paul wants from the Republican National Convention

It looks as if Ron Paul is going to be an active participant in the Republican National Convention in Tampa this August. That will mark a big change from 2008, when Congressman Paul held a rival convention in Minneapolis/St. Paul while the GOP nominated John McCain nearby.

Here’s our take on the five things Paul hopes to gain from staying within his party’s tent in 2012.

Read the rest here.