Well, the convention is here, and everyone expected a moment of unity within the Republican Party, sadly however, that has not happened.
Leading up to the convention, it became clear that the establishment was going to attempt to make a huge power grab. First, delegates were stripped from Maine, Massachusetts, and Louisiana. Of course, all of those delegates happened to be supporters of Ron Paul. The deal is, in order to get nominated on the floor of the convention, a candidate must have the plurality of delegates from at least five states. Ron Paul had the plurality in seven states. So the removal of Ron Paul delegates from Maine, Massachusetts, and Louisiana, left him with only four states, and making it impossible to become nominated on the floor of the convention.
For the establishment, that wasn’t enough. They proposed various rule changes that included making it so that a candidate now has to have the plurality of at least eight states in order to receive the Presidential nomination, allowing the RNC to change the rules anytime that they want, even in between elections, and giving most of the control over the binding of delegates to the national committee rather than the state parties. Make no mistake about it, this was blatant attack on the grassroots of the Republican Party. The grassroots mounted a massive opposition against the establishment’s unprecedented power grab. Minority reports were filed, and the grassroots delegates were not backing down. Tuesday, when it came up for a vote on the floor, they spoke up loudly and there seemed to be roughly equal support from both sides. John Boehner acted like he didn’t notice, and just said that it passed. There were clearly many calls of “objection”, and “point of order,” but he just ignored them. This was a huge defeat for the grassroots of the Republican Party and an insult to all of the delegates whose legitimate concerns were ignored.
I can’t help but ask myself; why? What was Mitt Romney thinking? The worst case scenario the establishment had to worry about, was Ron Paul supporters nominating Ron Paul on the floor of the convention. If that were the case, Rep. Ron Paul would’ve been able to speak for fifteen-minutes, and would have more than likely declined the nomination. Even if he didn’t, he didn’t have enough support to win the nomination. It is estimated that he could have gotten five-hundred votes, which wouldn’t have caused Romney the nomination.
Instead, he decided to completely divide the Republican Party. I have to wonder if his advisers aren’t working directly for Barack Obama, because he is the only one who will benefit from this. TEA Parties, Liberty Republicans and the grassroots party members are all baffled by the Romney camp, John Boehner, and the RNC. Former New Mexico Governor, and now Libertarian Party Presidential candidate, Gary Johnson will get a boost from this as well, and this will more than likely cost Mitt Romney the election.
Only one thing is for sure; Barack Obama and the Democrats are grinning from ear to ear right now.
On August 30th, 2012 at 5:03 pm
Mitt Romney is the designated loser. The puppet masters know exactly what they are doing. To guarantee his loss, he had to totally insult Constitution loving freedom fighters, assuring that many will vote for another party’s candidate, if they vote at all.
On September 14th, 2012 at 8:31 am
It is worse than Boehner simply ignoring the no votes. He was reading from a teleprompter that was pre-loaded to declare the motion passed. It is on YouTube, so you can see it for yourself. It was also the subject of an editorial by Ben Swann of Cincinatti Fox affiliate WXIX. You can see that on YT as well. Furthermore, the Texas delegation was seated so that they could see the teleprompter and I am informed by my many friends in that group that every single question that came before the convention floor was handled the same way. The microphones that are supposed to be used for input from the delegates were there for show, only. They were completely dead. One of them commented to our Texas chairman, Steve Munisteri about these things and he said it has been that way for twenty years. With these rule changes, I think we ought to lobby to have the convention completely canceled. There’s no reason to go and prop up this sham.