Paul Fail?
It looks like Ron Paul isn’t going to be officially nominated for the presidency in Tampa.
His backers failed to win a plurality of delegate slots at the Nebraska GOP convention Saturday, leaving the Texas congressman short of the support necessary to have his name placed into contention at the national convention.
According to national party rules, a candidate needs a plurality of the delegates in at least five states to have his name presented for the nomination – by falling short in Nebraska, the last state to hold its convention, Paul came up one state short.
Via Mataconis. While it’s mildly disappointing that we won’t have big “Restore America Now!” presence at the GOP convention, on balance I’m amused that the Paul fanatics, at one point convinced that they could upend the convention through delegate selection, will be almost completely shut out of the process. Paul’s strategy was to game the system in order to produce a nominee (or at least competitive campaign) whose political positions were dramatically at variance with the bulk of his party; this strategy was premised on the assumption that the Paul people were, in effect, the smartest people in the room. This is generally in accord with the “you just don’t get it, do you” feeling that accompanies any conversation with a Ron Paul fanatic, and it’s altogether satisfying to see that deflated.
Cue Ronbot hysterics about how they were robbed by the GOP establishment in 5.. 4… 3…
I’m hardly a Paulbot, but the party really screwed that guy. Have you read anything about the Maine caucuses?
I agree. While there is a good deal of innocent schadenfreude in the outcome, the Paulbots by and large were the smartest guys in the Republican room, and largely lost because the party bosses went ‘screw the rules, rules are for suckers’ … and I think if they’d been willing to resort to using lawyers and courts, there might have been a very different result. Of course, as this is largely a dry run for Rand Paul ’16 (or ’20 I suppose), that degree of ruthlessness wasn’t exerted.
But that sort of thing was inevitable, unless Paul performed amazingly well. No large organization would tolerate an outcome unacceptable to the vast majority of its members. If the Democratic Party had some loophole that the KKK could exploit to get floor time at the convention, well, that rule would be interpreted however it needed to in order to prevent that happening.
Perhaps. But I think it’s a bit unfair to compare Libertarians to racists…
That’s like saying voter suppression is okay because we don’t want racist voting.
Deflated? No.
They were already convinced that the “elites” in the national party were out to silence them. I haven’t poked around the Paul-o-sphere today, but I imagine that that feeling has not abated with this setback.
It’ll just make them angrier. It would have been better for the GOP to let Paul speak and deflate his fanclub a little bit when he gave his speech about Liberty and Freedom and then endorsed Mitt Romney (because he’s a Republican first, second and last). Now he can sit back and remain “Mr. Purity” to his fanclub and they can find another Libertarian Messiah to pin their hopes and dreams onto.
And this will be bad for Mitt Romney how? Mitt Romney can now position himself as a relative moderate (insofar as anybody cares about Ron Paul at all), and Ron Paul can continue to posture all he wants. It’s a win-win.
Yes, this is clearly not important for Romney either way. Most things are neutral for Romney’s chances, and this is one of them.
Yeah – I didn’t mean to make my comment sound like this was somehow bad or good for Mitt Romney. No matter how worried the Romney Team was about Paul making them look bad, I don’t think that actually was something they should have been worried about (worry more about Mitt Romney making Mitt Romney look bad perhaps).
This is a good outcome for Ron Paul and the continuation of the fundraising campaign that is the Ron Paul Revolution. Having to get up and publicly endorse Mitt Romney after his fanclub worked their asses off to get him a speaking position at the convention would have been very bad for his gravy train.
I don’t think the Romney Team is thinking about Ron Paul making them look bad right now.
This.
Every time time they suffer a state level convention loss, the narrative they’ve pushed is that they were illegally shut out by Romney supporters, and that they were actually the winners. Why should they change now.
Maybe we will all get lucky and they will all take their ball and stay home in November. That or just hold their breath until they turn blue.
Some of them are already blue from the colloidal silver, so how could we tell?
I haven’t seen a good blue libertarian reference in years.
It’s a different shade of blue.
A Soulful Shade of Blue?
Fifty Shades of Blue.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKWIqRAW_WI
This is the reason why it was so daft for those concerned about civil liberties to back Ron Paul in the Republican primaries: if the Republicans allowed Ron Paul to have a presence at the convention and influence with a potential Republican administration, it would be at the expense of Ron Paul closing ranks with the other Republicans.
Ron Paul isn’t big on closing ranks, so Ron Paul’s civil liberty supporters merely end up wasting their time and making fools of themselves. Or if Ron Paul plays against type and closes ranks with the Republicans, he shuts up about civil liberty issues, and Ron Paul’s civil liberty supporters merely end up wasting their time and making fools of themselves. At least Esau got a mess of pottage out of his deal.
Do you mean this sad trombone?
Or this sad trombone?
The first is better known, but the second is more emotionally consistent.
I think he meant Carson McCullers’ Ballad of the Sad Trombone.
Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch of delusional and moronic asshats. On the other hand, I am going to miss the potential for an even bigger sideshow at the Tampa Clown Circus. That could have kept me laughing for weeks.
Oh, I wouldn’t count on the Paultards staying away from the Tampa Clown Circus. Just because they don’t get seats in the hall doesn’t mean that they’re going to take it quietly.
That could be fun! ;-)
There are an awful lot of ostensible pledged Romney delgates that are Paul supporters–his supporters have been taking over the party apparatus in states where Romney won the primary.
Couldn’t we take this and run with it? Form our own little Project Mayhem group to invade winger sites, pretend to be Paulites. We could all cry about how the GOP establishment screwed us and we’ll be damned if I’m going to the polls to vote for Romney after that? I mean, Romney is almost as liberal as Obama, so what’s the point of even going to the polls.
Turnabout is far play, right?
Indeed. What we really need to do is elect an uber socialist like Obama to heighten the contradictions for the American people. Then they’ll know that Democrats will always fail us, and a real Conservative (like Rand Paul!) can get elected in 2016!
Florida has refused to ban firearms outside the Convention Hall. Angry teabaggers and paultards. I’m looking forward to angry right-wingers chanting, “the whole world is watching”as they blow each other away,
Too bad the airspace will be blocked. An airdrop of hundreds of automatic weapons would be a nice peace offering to our right-wing friends.
Just give me an hour’s warning so I can get far enough away.
If you knew zombies were about to invade, you would get away well in advance. Why treat this any differently?
Unnecessary. They’re all generally armed to the teeth anyway.
Paul Fail
Hm. Seems redundant. Perhaps you meant;
“Paul, Fail”
in which case I would have read it as
“Paul, Rand”
as I’m pretty sure “Fail” is just a nickname.
Paul is dead?
No. He’s the one left live (Ringo counts too, I guess).
Here’s clue for you all–the walrus was really John.
I thought we were going to see the long-awaited Farley/Campos blogspat. Go it, husband! Go it, bear!
The Paulites should have chosen the radical progressive method for political change: crossing their fingers and voting for the guy with the obviously fake promises.
As opposed to voting for an actually evil and delusional lunatic?
I’m sure you all could find one of your own.
That’s why I’m voting for Jesus.
My point, which you artfully evade, is that voting for the lesser evil is still far preferable to voting for the significantly more evil, which is what the Paulistas have chosen to do.
I artfully evaded your point because it is irrelevant to the point, and I’m not particularly keen on discussing Paul’s evil nature again.
Whether Paul is evil or not, the “Paulistas” (with this many nicknames they must be doing something right) channeled their dissatisfaction into a political movement that heightened the visibility of their top issues, affected change within a party, and all in opposition to the republican party mainstream.
affected change within a party
Examples please. Unless your confusion between “affected” and “effected” was deliberate, in which case, well played, sir, well played indeed.
They got a lot of nicknames. That means they were doing something right. What’s so hard to understand about that?
Any kind of causal linkage? They have so many nicknames because they are fanatical lunatics.
I have yet to see any impact by Paul and his acolytes on the GOP and the current evidence (lack of delegates) does not suggest that they will have any impact going forward.
This all made me wonder about 2008 Libertarian candidate for president and former Republican Bob Barr. In the primaries he liked Newt.
Apologies for not being sufficiently clear, but I was attempting to be sarcastic. I have no affection or respect for Ron Paul or his followers.
A large part of the problem is that Paul is a member of the Republican Party. At least as far as presidential politics are concerned, the only way that Paul gets anything done (by way of a cabinet position or a plank in the platform) is by dealing with other Republicans. So Paul can cut a deal with the other Republicans, or Paul can grandstand and get nothing done. And if Paul cuts a deal with the Republican Party as it is currently constituted, one of the first things in that deal would be that Paul shuts up about civil liberties.
What is a “fake promise?” Is this to imply that Obama ever pretended to be a “radical progressive,” or even a “progressive?” How dim would one need to be to believe that? Brad?
How dim would one need to be to believe that?
Exactly as dim as the median Republican voter.
Or libertarian.
[...] Scott Lemieux with the close: [...]
I always suspected the Paultroons of being made up largely of rules lawyers.
Paul might not be dead yet: http://reason.com/blog/2012/07/16/ron-paul-lost-nebraska-but-can-he-still
http://www.dailypaul.com/245043/ben-swann-facts-clarification-from-the-rnc-rules-committee-ron-paul-has-6-states