Tag Archives: rnc

What Ron Paul didn’t say

TAMPA, September 6, 2012 — There was no big announcement during Ron Paul’s appearance on Jay Leno Tuesday night. On the contrary, Paul’s appearance was somewhat anticlimactic given Mitt Romney’s nomination at the Republican National Convention last week. Of course, he still said what he has been saying for over thirty years in public life: America must stop spending money it doesn’t have, must liquidate its debts and rethink the role of government as cradle-to-grave caregiver and policeman of the world.

Ron Paul has said many memorable things during his two most recent campaigns for president. A debate moderator tried to put him on the spot regarding his position on leaving Iraq, asking contemptuously, “What is your plan to get U.S. troops out of Iraq?” Paul replied without hesitation, “We marched right in there without a plan, we can march right out.”

When asked about Newt Gingrich’s suggestion that the U.S. government explore colonizing the moon, Paul replied, “No, I don’t want to go to the moon, although I’d like to send some politicians up there.”

A few days ago, I posed a question at the end of my story on the Maine delegation fiasco. What were they really so afraid of?

It wasn’t what Ron Paul said that had them so scared. It was what he didn’t say.

Continue at Communities@ Washington Times…

The real story behind those Ron Paul delegates from Maine

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TAMPA, September 2, 2012 – By the time of Marco Rubio’s speech at the Republican National Convention (RNC), rhetoric overload and sore feet had overcome any desire I had to listen. I sat down at a table in the corridor of the Tampa Bay Times Forum. A few minutes later, several young people sat in the other chairs.

One of them was wearing a tee shirt that read, “Texas Remembers the Alamo, and the Maine, and the Oklahoma, and the Louisiana, and the Oregon, and the Massachusetts.”

Those are the other five states in which Ron Paul had majorities one week before the RNC. Together with the three states he actually won (Iowa, Minnesota and Nevada) Ron Paul would have carried eight states had many of those delegates not been unseated at the last minute.

The man wearing the tee shirt was Chris Howe, Ron Paul supporter and alternate delegate from Texas. Rob Hinojosa was a guest and the graphic designer of the tee shirts.

One day before, both had marched out of the RNC along with the Maine delegation and an army Ron Paul’s other delegates chanting “As Maine goes, so goes the nation!”

Howe and Hinojosa went to work on their smart phones and in short order produced Ashley Ryan, 21, the youngest national committeewoman in the history of the Republican Party.

Continue at Communities@ Washington Times…

Ryan confirmed that Ron Paul did indeed still have 20 of the 24 delegates from Maine as of the day before the RNC. They had been ready for a fight since learning of a challenge to the delegation a month earlier.

All that has been reported so far is that the delegation was contested on the grounds that the state convention did not follow “parliamentary procedure.” However, the details tell a very different story.

“The contest was filed by current national committeewoman Jan Staples and Peter Cianchette, who was the Romney state director for Maine. Those are well-known Romney supporters. They filed the contest based on the claims that our state convention lacked credentialing and lacked security. The ironic thing about that is that Jan Staples is on the executive committee for the party, so it was her job to plan the state convention. So if there was lax credentialing or if there was lax security, that would have been her fault,” explained Ryan.

Credentialing and security means that the officers of the convention ensure that all inside are who they say they are and that only duly elected delegates are present to vote.

“When they first presented their case to the contest committee, the contest committee found that there wasn’t enough evidence to invalidate the state convention or to rule against the delegates. So, instead of throwing it out like you would in a regular court of law – in a court of law if you sue someone and you don’t have enough evidence your case gets thrown out – in this situation the RNC kicked it down the line for a few more weeks and said we’ll figure it out in Tampa,” continued Ryan.

So, the convention is chaired by a Romney supporter and the national committeewoman in charge of credentialing and security is a Romney supporter. After Ron Paul supporters win a landslide victory, that same committeewoman joins Romney’s state campaign director in filing a contest based upon her own failure to ensure proper credentialing and security. The matter is put before the RNC, who are working hand in hand with Romney’s campaign.

As Ron Paul himself once wrote of the Federal Reserve System, “If that sounds fishy, then you understand it just fine.”

A call on Friday to Ms. Staples’ home phone was not returned.

Facing similar pressure, four of the five states agreed to have some of their delegates replaced with Romney supporters, but Maine held out.

“We didn’t agree to anything. We decided that we’d fight until the very end. The Committee on Contests made a recommendation to the Committee on Credentials to take 10 of our delegation off, 10 of our alternates off, so that’s 20 people total, and then the RNC hand-picked 10 delegates and 10 alternates to take their place, obviously who are all Mitt Romney supporters, all hand-picked and for the most part, party insiders” said Ryan.

So who were these unelected delegates? Are they even from Maine?

“These people are from Maine, but the people who chose these people are not from Maine. From what I’ve been told, but I haven’t been able to confirm this yet, our state party paid for them to come down, paid for their travel expenses and their hotel expenses, which a lot of people are incredibly angry about because they worked for months and in some cases years to make sure that they could afford to be here. They saved up over the four years to be able to fly down and now the state party is paying to fly down people who were never elected,” said Ryan

These details lend insight into former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele’s comment to Jon Stewart that the RNC’s treatment of Ron Paul and his supporters was “the height of rudeness and stupidity.”

“Why would you alienate them,” continued Steele, “get on the floor and not let them speak? Let his name go up on the board and let them see the numbers of electoral votes that he received.”

Had all of his delegates been seated, Ron Paul would also have been entitled to a 15-minute, unedited speech.

Apologists for the RNC claim that all of this was done to ensure that the convention came off as a show of unity within the party behind its nominee for president.

One has to wonder, though. What were they really so afraid of?

Tom Mullen is the author of A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.

Peter Schiff on The Real Crash, Austrian economics and Ron Paul

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TAMPA, August 30, 2012 – Like Ron Paul, Peter Schiff was predicting the 2008 economic meltdown long before it occurred. Schiff is the president of Euro Pacific Capital, a firm that pursues investment strategies based upon Schiff’s contrarian economic analysis. Clients who took his advice over the past decade did very well, even after the financial crisis.

Both Paul and Schiff are proponents of the Austrian school of economics, which emphasizes free markets, sound money and Carl Menger’s subjective theory of value. Asked to describe what the “Austrian school” is, Schiff quipped,

“It’s kind of like you’re asking me ‘What’s Science? Or what’s astronomy, because you believe in astrology. Austrian economics is economics. Keynesianism is like a witch doctor. It’s all a bunch of nonsense, but politicians love Keynesianism, because it justifies what they want to do to get elected, which is spend more money, promise something for nothing, play Santa Claus.”

Schiff was Ron Paul’s economic advisor during the 2008 campaign.

Schiff became a national sensation when the predictions documented in his 2007 book, Crash Proof: How to Profit from the Coming Economic Collapse, came true. Not only was Schiff the darling of nationally televised financial and investing programs, but he found a whole new audience among Ron Paul supporters, who drove millions of page views to the You Tube video “Peter Schiff was right.”

Continue at Communities@ Washington Times…

Doug Wead not a typical Ron Paul supporter

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TAMPA, August 30, 2012 – Anyone who has followed the Republican Party presidential nominating process knows the typical Ron Paul supporter. He or she is young, passionate about Paul’s platform, and willing to ride buses all night and knock on doors all day to support Ron Paul. Most often, he or she has never participated in the political process before.

Doug Wead couldn’t be less typical in that respect. Wead is a longtime Republican Party insider. He’s worked on seven Republican presidential campaigns, starting with Barry Goldwater’s in 1964. He’s also worked in three administrations, for Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. He has entertained presidents at his house and visited theirs.

Before 2008, he didn’t know who Ron Paul was and wouldn’t have agreed with him on much..

Like so many others, Wead first became acquainted with Ron Paul during Paul’s 2008 bid for the Republican presidential nomination. Wead had concerns based upon his long experience about the Iraq War. That was how Ron Paul first caught his attention.

“When I saw the debate you mention in 2008, I thought I was the only person in the world who knew this or felt this way, and I hear Ron Paul start talking about this stuff, I didn’t know who he was. I said, ‘Who is this guy? How dare he talk about these things in public?”

Continue at Communities@ Washington Times…

Ron Paul festival set for fairgrounds in Tampa UPDATED: June 13, 2012 12:25 PM EST

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TAMPA, June 12 2012 – The rollercoaster ride for Ron Paul’s supporters continues amidst more delegate wins and Senator Rand Paul’s controversial endorsement of Romney.

Liberty Unleashed, the nonprofit group incorporated in Florida by Paul supporters specifically to organize Paul Festival, announced today that it had signed a contract with the Florida State Fairgrounds in Tampa to hold the event there August 24-26. The RNC starts August 27.

Paul Festival will be three days of music, entertainment and activism featuring nationally-known musicians, comedians and other entertainers.

It will also feature plenty of the ideas shared by those who make up what Paul’s supporters call “the liberty movement.”

Liberty Unleashed and the Fairgrounds needed approval from the RNC Committee on Arrangements (COA) in order to proceed with the event. Both major parties typically lock up hundreds of venues in the host city during the week surrounding their national conventions. Liberty Unleashed had claimed that the COA was blocking the event to alienate Paul’s supporters.

Coming on the heels of Rand Paul’s endorsement, this latest development may lead to speculation about a deal that included release of the fairgrounds.

The COA had maintained that they were not blocking the event and that the request was simply in line with many others. The Paul Festival announcement was made after the COA was closed for the day. An e-mail was sent asking for clarification and an update will be provided should they respond.

Continue at Washington Times Communities…

Will Ron Paul delegates make Romney flip flop again?

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TAMPA, June 10, 2012 – With all but one of the Republican primaries concluded, there are two things that are clear. The first is that unless something very improbable occurs, Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee for president in 2012. The second is that Ron Paul will have an army of delegates at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in August.

The media continue to wonder what Paul hopes to accomplish with those delegates, although he has been clear from the beginning. His primary goal was to win the nomination. His secondary goal was to influence the direction of the Republican Party.

Paul has remained consistent in his strategy. In a June 6 e-mail to supporters, Paul said

“We stand to send nearly 200 bound delegates to the Republican National Convention in Tampa…What’s more, we will send several hundred additional supporters to Tampa who, while bound to Romney, believe in our ideas of liberty, constitutional government, and a common-sense foreign policy. When it is all said and done, we will likely have as many as 500 supporters as delegates on the Convention floor.

And while this total is not enough to win the nomination, it puts us in a tremendous position to grow our movement and shape the future of the GOP!”

Some of Paul’s supporters dispute that any of the RNC delegates are bound to vote for any candidate, citing Republican Party Rule No. 38. Obviously, Ron Paul doesn’t see it that way.

However, one thing everyone acknowledges is that no delegate to the RNC is bound to any candidate’s position on the issues. That means Paul’s 500 delegates can vote any way they want regarding the Republican Party platform.

Continue at Washington Times Communities…

Republican Party blocking massive Ron Paul event in Tampa?

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TAMPA, June 2, 2012 – Ron Paul may have stopped actively campaigning in primary states that have not yet voted, but his Revolution shows no sign of slowing down.

Just a few days after the media erroneously reported that Ron Paul had dropped out of the presidential race, he won 80% of the delegates going to the Republican National Convention (RNC) from Minnesota.

His supporters are now organizing a massive event on the eve of the RNC to celebrate their ideas and Paul’s 77^th birthday. Not just a political rally, Paul Festival will be three days of music, entertainment and activism featuring nationally-known musicians, comedians and other entertainers.

It will also feature plenty of the ideas of what Paul’s supporters call “the liberty movement.”

Reminiscent of Paul’s Rally for the Republic during the RNC in 2008, the event may have the Republican Party concerned about being upstaged again. The 2008 event sold out the Target Center in Minneapolis.

This time, Paul’s supporters are attempting to secure the Florida State Fairgrounds, where they expect an estimated 40,000 people per day to attend. The Republican Party is trying to block them.

Continue at Washington Times Communities…

Why can’t Romney win delegates like Ron Paul?

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TAMPA, May 10, 2012 – With his wins in Maine and Nevada last weekend and imminent wins at state conventions in six more states, it appears that some of us were correct when we said over a month ago that rumors of Ron Paul’s campaign demise were greatly exaggerated.

The media continues to insinuate that there is not only something underhanded about Paul’s strategy, but something fundamentally wrong with what Politico describes as “the country’s cumbersome and arcane system for nominating presidential candidates.” According to this narrative, Paul’s supporters are “undermining democracy” by using said “arcane rules” to nullify the wishes of the electorate.

One could argue that Paul’s strategy is perfectly legitimate and that the process is deliberately set up the way it is to ensure that only informed and committed voters become delegates and choose the nominee. It is a republican rather than a democratic electoral process.

This process doesn’t disenfranchise anyone because everyone has an equal opportunity to become a delegate. The rules are not “arcane.” Arcane means that the information is only available to some people. The rules for how one can become a delegate and how the nominee is chosen are published on the Republican Party website in each state and are equally available to everyone.

That brings us to the real question, representing the other side of all of the passive-aggressive attacks on Paul’s strategy and the nominating process itself.

Why can’t Romney simply employ the same strategy as Ron Paul? Why can’t he win delegate majorities in states where he won the popular vote?

Continue at Communities @ Washington Times…

Washington Times Communities link no longer active. Here is a recovered segment from quotation in Reason:

As far as I know, no one has conducted a poll of primary or caucus voters asking them why they did not participate in the delegate selection process. That means that one can only speculate as to why people who support Romney in the popular vote don’t tend to go on to become delegates…

for the most part, one need only be registered to vote in the primary or caucus. In some states, one must be a registered Republican to participate in the popular vote. In others, Democrats and independents can participate.

If one meets those minimal qualifications, one may cast a vote in the primary or caucus. One does not have to be informed on the issues or even know who is running. That doesn’t necessarily mean that all or even most participants in popular votes are uninformed. However, there is no requirement that they are informed and there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that this may be a problem.

For example, a CNN poll following the 2008 Republican primary found that John McCain had strong support from voters who said that they disapproved of the Iraq War, even though McCain had recently said that it would be fine with him if the U.S. stayed in Iraq for a hundred years. Were these voters unaware of McCain’s position?…

This could never happen in the delegate selection process. By the time that a candidate for the RNC delegation has participated in the local caucus, the district or county conventions, and finally the state convention, he not only knows who all of the candidates are but can likely recite their policy positions. He’s heard them over and over during that process…

Delegates are also required to be more committed to their candidates than primary voters. Those local, district, county and state conventions aren’t exactly exciting. In fact, they’re downright boring…

So, Romney does overwhelmingly better in contests that don’t require the participants to be informed on the issues or even know all of the candidates….All they have to do is register and make a 15-minute commitment to pull a lever behind a curtain.

Ron Paul does overwhelmingly better in contests that require delegates to commit months of their time to the process, to hear the arguments of the other candidates ad nauseum and make arguments for their own candidate in return, and sometimes even form coalitions with the delegates supporting other candidates in order to achieve common goals.

Tom Mullen is the author of Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness? Part One and A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.

Ron Paul delegate strategy is perfectly legitimate

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For at least a month, the media have been ignoring compelling evidence that Ron Paul is doing much better in the Republican nomination race than he did in the primary/caucus popular votes. In their hurry to write the general election narrative, the media have forgotten to perform their primary function: to report the facts. The facts are that Ron Paul has won at least two states and will likely win more.

Now that Paul’s success is impossible to ignore, the media are writing a new narrative. Headlines like “Ron Paul’s stealth state convention takeover” and “Ron Paul People Playing Mischief with Delegates” indicate that instead of ignoring Paul’s victories, they now seek to imply that there is something sneaky or unfair about them. Some even suggest that his delegate success in states where he did not win the popular vote may even (gasp!) “undermine democracy.”

Undermining democracy would be a good thing. If there is anything we have too much of in 21^st century America; it’s democracy. The United States flourished as a free and prosperous society largely because it was founded as a republic. The reason for the bicameral legislature, the separation of powers, and the other so-called “checks and balances” was to protect us from democracy, which James Madison called “the most vile form of government.”

Based upon the belief that government “even in its best state, is but a necessary evil,” the American republic was built to check the will of the majority whenever it wished to confer more power on the government. That’s why there are two houses in Congress. In a democracy, there would be only one. Even after the House passes a law, it then has to pass the Senate, which originally represented the state governments, not the people. The 17^th Amendment removed this important check on the power of the federal government.

Ron Paul’s strategy takes advantage of the republican nature of the nomination process. That process does not rely purely on a popular vote to determine who will be the nominee. Instead, voters must go through a multi-tiered vetting process of successive elections in order to become a delegate to the RNC.

This does not remove all of the dangers inherent in a pure democracy, but it helps. At least a delegate has been forced to hear the arguments of other candidates before blindly casting a vote. He also must have the commitment necessary to endure the long delegate selection process.

That the process is republican rather than democratic does not disenfranchise anyone. Everyone has an equal opportunity to become a delegate. Everyone has an equal opportunity to read the rules. That supporters of some candidates choose not to go through the process does not “nullify their wishes.” That they choose not to become informed on how candidates are actually nominated does not represent a deception. On the contrary, the whole process is intentionally designed to ensure that uninformed or uncommitted people do not directly choose the nominee.

Colorado further evidence Ron Paul will challenge Romney in Tampa

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TAMPA, April 15, 2012 — The Ron Paul campaign has consistently maintained that it has won far more delegates than is generally reported by the media. The Associated Press projects Romney’s delegate count to be well over 600, more than ten times their projections for Ron Paul. However, Colorado has provided some evidence that the Paul campaign’s demise has been greatly exaggerated.

Colorado completed its state convention yesterday. Under the headline, “Romney lost Colo. caucuses, gets most delegates,” Real Clear Politics reported the results this way.

“GOP has chosen 13 Romney delegates and six Santorum delegates. The remaining 17 delegates are unpledged, meaning they are free to choose any Republican candidate for president.”

That’s technically accurate, but it begs a question from anyone even minimally curious: Who do those 17 unpledged delegates support? Are they undecided, or do they intend to vote for a specific candidate at the Republican National Convention (RNC)?

According to the Real Clear article, “Many would-be delegates criticized Romney, and some dejected Santorum fans teamed with Ron Paul supporters to push what they called a ‘Conservative Unity Slate’ to look for a non-Romney presidential candidate.”

That is also technically accurate, but misleading. Not only did Paul and Santorum supporters “push” the Conservative Unity Slate, they got its delegates elected to go to the RNC.

Todd King of Lewis, Colorado is one of the elected delegates from that slate. King is a Ron Paul supporter and will vote for Paul for president on the first ballot in Tampa. I asked him how the 17 unpledged delegates break down. This is his statement.

“13 unpledged delegates, including me, will vote for Ron Paul on the first ballot. One unpledged delegate will vote for Santorum. The remaining three unpledged delegates, also known as the ‘delegates at large,’ are the state GOP Chairman, the state GOP National Committeman and the National Committeewoman. Those three will likely vote for Romney. They usually vote for the frontrunner so as not to make waves.”

King said that the Paul delegates ran unpledged in order to win the votes of Santorum supporters who understand that the delegates will vote for Paul at the RNC, but would not be legally bound to do so. If anything changes with the Paul or Santorum campaigns between now and August, both camps would have an opportunity to persuade unpledged delegates to change their minds.

This paints a much different picture of the real delegate count for Colorado. The final breakdown looks like this:

Romney – 13

Paul – 13

Santorum – 7

At large – 3 (count these for Romney if he is still the frontrunner in August)

Remember, this is a state where Santorum won with 40% of the caucus popular vote. Romney came in 2nd with 35% and Ron Paul finished last with 12%. Yet Paul is in a virtual tie for the lead in terms of the actual votes he will get on the first ballot at the RNC.

There were also 36 alternate delegates elected at Colorado’s convention. These delegates are seated in place of any delegates that cannot make it to the RNC or decide not to go. I spoke with two of them, Bobby Eskenberry and Lloyd Garcia, both from Congressional District 7. They are both pledged to Paul and hope to eventually be seated in Tampa.

Neither could provide hard numbers, but Garcia believes that almost all of the alternate delegates are Paul supporters. He also believes that if nothing changes regarding Santorum’s campaign, many of his delegates may forego the time and expense of attending the convention, leaving the door open for Paul to win the state when alternates pledged to Paul are seated.

How many more states are going to turn out like Colorado?

Santorum won the caucus vote in Missouri by a much wider margin with 55% of the vote. Romney finished second with 25% and Paul was a distant third with 12%. However, early indications are that Paul will win far more delegates at Missouri’s state convention June 1-2. According to Fox News, Missouri’s GOP leadership admits that Paul may get all of the delegates from Missouri.

The Iowa GOP leadership has previously acknowledged that Paul may win Iowa as well. Iowa holds its state convention on June 16.

These are all states where Ron Paul lost the popular vote by a wide margin. In states like Maine, Alaska, Minnesota and others, where Paul finished a close 2nd or at least did much better, he could win the final delegate counts by wide margins.

All of this is important information for voters in states that have not held their primaries or caucuses yet. Voters often make their decisions based at least in part upon their confidence in a candidate’s “electability.” They may choose not to vote for the candidate they like best if they think he can’t win.

The media wrote a narrative at the beginning of the primary season that Ron Paul could never win the nomination. That likely affected his performance in subsequent primaries. The new media narrative says that the nomination race is over and Romney has it locked up. That conflicts with the facts. Voters in upcoming primaries should know that this race is far closer than they’re being led to believe.