Over the weekend, Ron Paul won Maine and Nevada, gaining 20 of 24 delegates in Maine, and 22 of 25 in Nevada.
In addition to the chaos that Paul will cause at the national convention, consider how this makes the average Republican caucus-goer feel. You make a good faith effort to vote, you leave the caucus with the impression that you elected a delegate loyal to your candidate, and then you find out that your vote didn’t matter at all because some Paulist used a technicality to essentially unseat the person for whom you voted.
Valdivia
I also love the fact that the Romney team is so focused on gimmicks and petty stalker shit with Obama that they have dropped the ball on the most basic of things–follow through in elections at the local level.
And these people are the most competent? Really?
c u n d gulag
This is Ron either trying to insure Rand’s future in the Republican Party, or ruining it!
And I don’t think either of them is smart enough to know.
FSM – please, OH PLEASE, let it ruin it!
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Great comic news for a Monday morning. Hilarity will ensue in Tampa.
Brachiator
Rachel Maddow had a segment on this last week. She speculated that Paul’s strategy is to get enough delegates to be able to formally have his name entered for nomination. This would make quite a splash even if it is ultimately futile. It also suggests that Paul has a bit of an ego behind his aw shucks grandpa demeanor.
And who knows, maybe Paul sees an opportunity to have libertarians actually have some input into the GOP platform. This would be quite impressive for a fringe group, outdoing the previous efforts of the Tea Party.
I can’t imagine GOP bigwigs passively sitting back and letting this happen. But battles for delegates are nothing new, and it is sure fun to watch this in-fighting.
jwb
Did my comment just get eaten? The internets have been acting oddly this morning.
MattF
Mitt Romney has one specific personal talent: lying. He lies freely, abundantly, eyes wide open. Doesn’t matter when his lies get debunked, the response is to repeat the lies again and again. All this business about votes, delegates, conventions, policy, shmolicy… Mitt– the competent executive– pays other people to do it. And Mitt– again, the competent executive– makes sure that his own assignment is to do what he’s good at.
Schlemizel
Old enough to remember the McCarthy faction pulling this same shit in ’68. Yeah, it is designed to set fire to the party & cause divisions that will last a couple of generations.
Having seen how it played out in the Dem party it will be interesting to see what happens with a top-down tight-sphincter GOP.
This makes me think little Ayn Paul will be the Veep loser because Willard is going to have to buy their cooperation somehow & just platform statements probably won’t do it.
gonzone
No one does voter disenfranchisement like the GOP!
One rumor is that these votes are to secure a VP slot for his son Aqua Buddha.
jwb
@Brachiator: With Tea Party banners flying in the background, Paul yesterday endorsed the nuttier of the major GOP Senate candidates for the open seat in Texas.
Frankensteinbeck
‘I might not be stuck with Romney after all?!’
EIGRP
So what’s the delegate count look like? Anyone have a link?
Zifnab
:-p This is how the party system has always worked. You think you are voting, but you’re really just taking a government-sponsored opinion poll.
Paul pealed back the curtain, but don’t think for a minute that this exact same affair was going on with every other President.
We’ve needed to jettison this “indirect democracy” system for decades now. Maybe Paul will finally be the person that pushes proper electoral reform through.
JGabriel
mistermix @ Top:
Is anyone else reminded of the the way George McGovern manipulated the Democratic convention rules, which he helped write, to get the nomination in 1972, and the Nixon landslide that followed?
Perhaps Paul’s manipulations will presage a similar landslide for the Democrats this year.
.
amk
Go paultards. Don’t let rove and the establishment get away with it.
JGabriel
@Brachiator:
I think that ship’s already sailed – this is Paul’s third run for President. Once requires an enormous ego; to run a third time, after already failing to even get your party’s nomination the first two times, requires brass balls the size of Epcot.
.
SatanicPanic
The Paulbots all seem to think that this is a viable strategy, as if they can somehow finagle their way to enough delegates the Republican party will just let Paul grab the nomination. These people are more delusional than even I gave them credit for.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
I hope this makes the average Republican caucus-goer feel like shit, or outraged, or whatever stress it inflicts on them.
They vote for Republicans in this day and age, they deserve to feel like shit…or betrayed or whatever.
Brachiator
@JGabriel:
Ron Paul is never going to be the nominee, so I don’t think the analogy works.
But isn’t this less about democracy and electoral reform, and more about how political parties are organized, and how political parties determine their candidates?
Why should I care how the Republicans tie themselves up in knots to figure out who their nominee will be?
dmsilev
re: the Romney campaign, @Valdivia:
In this year’s GOP field, yes, yes they are. Sad, isn’t it?
cmorenc
@Brachiator:
ANYONE who runs for President of the United States in pursuit of ANY party’s nomination has a superabundance of ego; it’s a necessary requisite for willingly doing all the glad-handling and crap-work required to gain enough support, money, and attention to make a go of it, and for seriously entertaining what you’d do with all that power if you actually succeeded in getting it.
El Tiburon
Yeah because the vote is so sacrosanct to Republicans.
Second, consider the Lillies.
Who gives a rats,fuck how the average republican voter feels.
jibeaux
There was a Ron Paul guy out at my polling place for early voting on Saturday, he was very obvious because he had a big-ass sign unlike most other greeters. We’re not a caucus or anything, just a regular primary election place where he doesn’t stand a chance in hell. They have enthusiasm, is what I can say for those guys.
jwb
@Brachiator: Agreed, but we should be trolling the winger sites on this for all it’s worth. You know they’d repay us the compliment.
Schlemizel
@JGabriel:
George didn’t need to manipulate any rules to win. Nixon had selected him to win & his dirty tricks team torpedoed the campaigns of all the candidates that were polling better than trick dick.
There was the NH assault on Muskeys family, the ‘homo’ letter in Florida and a couple of other black ops run by CREEP to push everyone else out of the race.
Deen
@Brachiator:
They are not independent issues. The election system of the US encourages a two-party system, and discourages candidates to form new parties. In most other democratic countries, Ron Paul would be running his own party by now, instead of having to try and take over an existing one.
dedc79
I’m pretty sure that a good portion of the Paul delegates are nonetheless pledged to cast a vote for Romney. At least that’s what TPM is reporting.
Linda Featheringill
@cmorenc: #20
Absolutely. It’s also true that no truly sane person would run for president of the US.
So it’s a case of my nutty egomaniac versus your nutty egomaniac.
[but mine is cuter, so there]
Seth Owen
No, it’s no so nefarious as that. Nobody was “unseated.” The Ron Paul guys just stick around so that they get seated in the first place. Anybody could do it. It’s just that none of the other candidates — but especially Mitt Romney — have supporters dedicated enough to do that. It’s been explained openly by Rachel Maddow, confirmed by a top Ron Paul aide and, frankly, must be widely known among Ron Paul supporters in order to work so if the Romney campaign doesn’t know about it then they are more incompetent than previously believed. Certainly possible, but I think they simply judge that Paul can’t get enough delegates this way to make a difference. We won’t know for a while if that judgment is correct.
StringonaStick
NPR’s Weekend Edition ran a story yesterday (Sunday) afternoon about the so-called rise of Libertarianism in the 18 to 29 demographic. First question for the 3 interviewees: do you expect to ever see a Social Security check? All answered a resounding, derisively-snorting NO.
This “we’re fucked on SS” attitude is quite common, even in people in their fourties; this just goes to show how effective the multi-decade and multi-pronged Rethug campaign to kill SS has been unfortunately. Why fight to preserve something you’ve already accepted as lost?
One hopeful aspect of the whole interview is that the demographic group being discussed is the typical “Atlas Shrugged – OMG that is so deep” late adolescent/early adulthood BS that life will soon disabuse most of them of simply by the fact that they’ll never get laid until they do.
xian
@dedc79: on the first round of voting, right? this would have mattered if Romney were to fail to achieve an absolute majority of delegates on the first vote but that’s not likely now, right?
Brachiator
@JGabriel:
Just running for president when you have no chance could just make you an odd political gadfly, like Harold Stassen, who ran 12 times and became a political joke. What is a bit more interesting here is how Paul is fighting for recognition and influence within the GOP. He could just as easily opt to run as a third party candidate and fall into that oblivion where the libertarians traditionally reside.
Bill Murray
@Schlemizel: McGovern did write the new rules, but got destroyed because those rules took much of the power from the normal power players in the party who then decided Nixon wasn’t so bad and got most of their constituencies with them
quannlace
Geez Louise, talk about the zombie candidate! I forgot Paul was still in the race. He hasn’t even been on or mentioned on Fox News, has he?
Villago Delenda Est
I’m wondering if Mark Penn is consulting for Rmoney this year. Because this sort of inattention to detail was the hallmark of Penn’s tenure working for Hillary Clinton.
gaz
If there’s anything to like about that bigoted jagoff, Ron Paul it’s that he gives the GOP leaders ulcers.
Villago Delenda Est
@dedc79:
The idea was that if the convention could not nominate on the first round, the delegates are instantly released from their pledges of support, and then Ron Paul’s stealth delegate team would put the kibosh on everyone else in the second round.
That was the idea, anyways. Like these people will honor pledges. They’re as mendacious as Rmoney himself.
Glidwrith
Anyone watch how completely they screwed up their own primaries? Or corrupted them so that they could get Rmoney in the door? There’s a nice account of it over at http://www.bradblog.com. And think about it for a moment – if they are willing to pull this crap in their own primaries to people who are part of the tribe, what are they going to do against the kommieliberalfascist that they just KNOW is doing the same thing? Ron Paul is batshit insane, but he is doing us a favor by demonstrating how the process can be corrupted.
Chris
The A-Team! YES!!!
TomG
I’m enjoying the prospect of a huge blow-up at the Republican Convention. And hey, it kept Ron Paul away from the Libertarian Party long enough to let Gary Johnson get a deserved nomination.
I know there is no way the powers-that-be in the RNC will ever let Paul get more than a few concessions, even if they break half the rules to keep him out. Bring on the popcorn, I say.
(I used to be a Paul supporter, but “woke up” about 5 or 6 years ago. Now I’m for Gary Johnson. He’s more socially liberal than Paul, and less crazy sounding.)
sb
I’ll consider it. I have absolutely no sympathy because said caucus-goer supports a party that willfully destroys the country but, okay, I’ll consider how they feel.
RalfW
As one of about 190 Jerry Brown delegates to the ~5,000 delegate TX state Democratic convention of 1992, one thing that the Paul delegates can get even if they’re pledged to Romney on the first ballot is probably a Paul speaking slot.
Our rabble of 190/5000=0.038 meant we got bupkus. Our wee little caucus actually picketed inside the 3 day long convention, trying to get 5 minutes of podium time, off prime-time even, for our state campaign chair. (Cops dang near showed us the door in that democratic exercise of fellow Democrats).
Those yellow dogs wouldn’t budge. We had endless and utterly boring speeches from g-d knows who, but not one Jerry fan in, idunno, 30+ hours of convention time.
But if the Paultards can control the delegations of several states, they can prob. demand some pretty good stage time.
Brachiator
@Glidwrith:
I don’t understand why people get so worked up over this. Ultimately, I don’t care who the GOP nominee is. I just want them to lose.
OT: I am loving the news stories this morning about how the stock market is unhappy with the French election results. I guess this will give Rush something to talk about.
chopper
@StringonaStick:
if i were in that group i would have also said that SS wouldn’t be there for me when i retire, and when the interviewer asked me why i’d point my thumb at the other guys and say ‘these shitheads, that’s why’.
James Hare
@Brachiator:
More importantly, why should the federal government impose rules on how the parties select their nominees?
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
The fundamental problem with “democracy” outside the United States is that invariably the peasants in France, Germany, Iraq, or Thailand will vote in their own self interest and not in the interest of the 1% in this country.
Time for an invasion.
MomSense
There were crazy goings on in Maine this weekend. The Republicans ended up with an extreme platform.
mdblanche
Maine, huh? When the Maine caucuses occurred I remember a lot of Paulites saying “it’s a conspiracy, we wuz robbed!” Any Mainiacs out there can correct me, but to me it looked like that disaster of a caucus was just greater than average incompetence on the state GOP’s part. And now the whole thing can play out again, but in reverse (except it’s still the establishment that’s incompetent.) Can’t you just feel the Republicans all drawing together for VICTORY in November?
GregB
@MomSense:
May there be a big enough backlash to force LePew to have to cater to the Democrats.
MomSense
I just realized that if this thing does blow up in Tampa–the convention goers might also be armed thanks to the crazy FL gun laws and the Governor’s decision to ignore Tampa mayor’s request to make an exception for the convention.
Staying far away from Tampa.
joes527
@Glidwrith: It is fun to watch and all. But anyone who thinks that a disorderly primary predicts a loss in the general has forgotten 2008.
rikryah
1. this is hilarious.
2. someone on another blog swears Rand is gonna be the VP choice for Willard.
Elizabelle
So their caucus votes for Herman Cain or Rick Perry won’t be counted?
Waaaah. A tragedy.
Valdivia
@dmsilev:
yes, even sadder that the media pimp them as being some sort of magicians of planning. gawd.
hmd
I heard that part of this is an attempt to get a lot of Ron Paul supporters on to the convention floor, where they can make asses of themselves. Especially the MA and IA delegations which are traditionally given prominent locations – MA because it is the presumptive nominee’s home state, and Iowa because it’s special.
If they can get enough, they’ll be able to place Paul’s name into nomination and then all those delegates will be able to cheer and make a lot of noise, even if they are required to vote for someone else.
Politics is weird. And creepy.
Canuckistani Tom
@MomSense:
This. Gunfight at the
OK CorralTampa convention centre.I’m wondering if Romney’s going to divert some of the UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH to anti-Paul ads. Freak out the right by saying things like he’ll get rid of the FBI, CIA, and USAF (They’re not in the constitution, irresponsible not to speculate, etc) and then they’re be nothing to stop the hordes of terrorists and drug smugglers, bla bla bla
Steve in DC
@StringonaStick
Don’t just blame the Republicans, most Libertarians are ex liberals.
The Democratic party was the party of civil liberties and are more humane foreign policy. For the 18-29 age group, their entire adult lives have been dominated by war and civil liberties issues. The Democrats have preached that all we needed was a Democratic president… well we got one, and shit got even WORSE. The Democratic party was the party that would end the drug wars, be transparent and stop harassing whistle blowers, all we needed was a Democratic president. Well we got one and shit got worse.
Point blank on the day to day issues that have dominated our lives, Democrats have been worse than Republicans once we got them elected. Despite the screaming and yelling of progressives that all you have to do is vote Democratic and things get better. And many of the loudest partisans screaming about these things under Bush, now cheer them on under Obama. In other words, partisan liberals are fucking full of shit.
Social security is another huge issue, and medicare. But are the Democrats fightnig to keep it? Hell no. The Democrats are yammering on about fixing it, and reciting GOP talking points. So we are at a point where we can say “well fuck I’m not going to get it, might as well blow it up now so I don’t have to pay into it for other pay for that long”. Because the Democrats attitude is “slowly bleed it to death” and the GOP is “shoot it in the skull now.
The GOP might be poisoning the pot, but the Democrats keep promising something and then doing the other thing.
It’s rare I see a libertarian in my age group that was former GOP, they are virtually all liberals. The libertarians are aggressively pulling people from the left into their fold.
As for Paul, he can’t win a general. I have a feeling this is all to cause havoc at the convention. And Pauls supporters sure as fuck aren’t going to vote for Mittens. What I do think would be hilarious is if Paul endorsed Johnson and Johnson managed to pull in 15% of the vote. That’s the base for federal funding of campaigns in the future. Which might finally make the Libertarian party strong enough to break from the Republican party. The chaos and shit storm that would cause would be glorious.
Glidwrith
@Brachiator: I don’t understand why people get so worked up over this. Ultimately, I don’t care who the GOP nominee is. I just want them to lose.
The problem is not all of the down-ticket Goopers will lose. Some will get into office and if they show this level of contempt for their own processes, it’s not much of a stretch to abuse the processes of government itself. All you have to do is look at Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida to see what happens when someone decides they will do as they please. The other problem is once they are in office, they will also rig it so they and their buddies stay there. Can you say voter suppression?
Quick edit: headed off to work, returning to lurk mode.
StringonaStick
@chopper: So true Chopper, so true.
The thing that irritated the shit outta me from the NPR story was their statement that the Rethug party is becoming “more Libertarian”; oh really? It doesn’t take a mastermind to note that the main reason why some of da youts like Grampy Paul’s Libertarian party because they think he supports the whole package: legalize weed, totally socially liberal, etc. Paul is on record as anti-choice, and he’s said he would let states decide for themselves on pot. The latter is a clever way of saying “we’ll keep it illegal on a state basis”.
The voters of my great state voted in medical pot a few years ago, and the legislature has been engaged in a game of squeezing that back down into a nothingburger ever since. So much for “the People have Spoken”.
Steve
@Steve in DC: Yes, one of the top three issues that voters in their 20s care about is for the government to stop harassing whistleblowers. You sure have your finger on the pulse there.
When I was in college 25 years ago, I didn’t believe Social Security would be there for my retirement and neither did anyone I knew. It didn’t make us all become conservatives or want to blow up the program. Nor do I think it really has a lot to do with the political campaign to pretend that SS is going bankrupt; the fact is that it’s hard to imagine as a kid that anything at all will be the same 50 years in the future. But I’m not sure any of this matters, because retirement programs aren’t high on the list of concerns for voters in their 20s either.
Jane2
If people don’t want the Ron Pauls of the world to upset the process on “technicalities”, said “technicalities” should be taken care of.
What Paul has done is within the rules. Suck it, Republicans.
Mnemosyne
@Steve in DC:
Shorter Steve in DC: Why doesn’t any one listen to white men anymore?
Though I do love how “civil libertarians” insist that torture apologist John Kiriakou is a “whistleblower” for going on TV and claiming that torture totally worked and, really, we only waterboarded Abu Zubaydah once, maybe twice.
Woodrowfan
shouldn’t the Paulbots be dressed in tracksuits and living in a bunker in the desert somewhere by now??
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Steve in DC: Our pet concern troll is on fire this morning. Musta got some decent coffee in at the think tank this morning, eh, Steve-o?
Southern Beale
I thought there were a lot of Mormons in Nevada, so I’m surprised that Ron Paul did that well. Can Romney not even secure the Mormon vote?
Deen
@Steve in DC:
And yet, when you ask libertarians about what liberals actually believe or want, most likely you’ll get little more than right wing talking points about Big Government and Socialism = Communism = destroying America.
The Tragically Flip
Libertarians are ex-liberals? Uhm, no they’re almost all climate deniers.
And libertarians still don’t show up in ideological polling, they remain a noisy and billionaire funded internet special club, but not a real force in the voting population. We really spend too much time discussing them. They should be in the same class as communitarians: A group of strange ideologues on the margins that few who don’t professionally study such things are even aware exist.
Clime Acts
LOL.
DougJ, your CONCERN for the fairness and equity of the Republican nominating process is duly noted.
hahahahahahaha….
Southern Beale
Really? Is there a survey or something showing that? I think “most Libertarians are ex liberals” might apply to those so-called “Reagan Democrats” at best — not exactly people you’d call “liberal.”
I think where Libertarians come from is the overriding disillusionment in our political institutions, something I blame on both established parties for constantly spreading a divisive message. But really you get it mostly from the Right, the whole “government isn’t the solution it’s the problem” crowd. You hear that enough, and then people point out the hypocrisy of the rightwingers and the hypocrisy of the Democrats and they throw up their hands and say “what’s the use, both sides are equally bad, I’m going to put my faith in something else.”
Uncle Cosmo
@JGabriel: The fuck it is. McGovern may have “helped write the rules” but everyone had the same opportunity to tailor their campaigns to take maximum advantage of them. Not his fault that the party regulars, who were used to rules they routinely manipulated to their own advantage, couldn’t figure out how.
The big fight at the convention was over a challenge by the stop-McGovern movement to the unit rule in California. Again, the old guard had every opportunity to play by the rules & win but they couldn’t manage it–so they tried to change the rules retroactively. It was nothing more (& nothing less) than an attempt to deny McGovern the nomination, & it was defeated by vote on the floor of the convention.
And @Schlemizel: Gene McCarthy won more votes than any other candidate during the 1968 Democratic primaries of the year, whereas the eventual nominee did not receive a single vote (he didn’t run in any of them). Are you equating that with “pulling the same shit”?
I’m getting good & goddamn sick of seeing supposedly good liberals trying to rewrite history as if those of us (I was “clean for Gene” & busted my butt for McGovern 4 years later) who were pushing the Democratic Party toward greater, wait for it, democracy are somehow the villains & the fucking party bosses the heroes. Screw all of you.
Xenos
@MomSense: Somebody dropping a few pop-its in the crowd outside that convention could set off a proper fire fight. Good idea to stay far away.
Chyron HR
@Clime Acts:
Now that Romney’s lost Maine and Nevada, is there a single state left where he actually achieved one of those VICTORIES!! you kept screaming about?
gaz
@Steve in DC:
FTFY
gaz
@Chyron HR: Wrong troll.
Roger Moore
@Xenos:
It’s been suggested before. I have to admit that it’s tempting in an abstract, not thinking about the bystanders who would be crippled or killed kind of way.
Frankensteinbeck
@MomSense:
There will be no violence at the convention. Yes, like a third of the attendees will be carrying guns, and there may be some seriously uncomfortable moments because of it. No actual shooting will occur, because they are, by design, the party of chickenhawks.
However, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a shooting or two near the convention. The victims would be latinos or blacks who don’t look dangerous. That’s the kind of victim a hateful, big-talking coward kills, not other armed men.
@Southern Beale:
There are a ridiculously tiny number of libertarians who complain like Hell on blogs that are sorta liberal. I think they were spawned by paranoia rather than disillusionment, but they certainly feed themselves a diet of lies and wild distortions like those mentioned above. Rather a lot of those come from Greenwald, which is why the guy irritates me. Lies of omission are the most vicious type of lies, and libertarians love them.
Nemesis
Uh, libertarian ideology has seeped into republican policy for years. The gop has decided to pick and choose which libertarian beliefs to co-opt and has done a good job of mainstreaming those beliefs.
Also, too, fuck Ron Paul.
Clime Acts
@Chyron HR:
As per usual, you’re an idiot.
Please link to where I have ever, EVAH, championed a Romney victory of any kind. Thanks, I’ll wait.
You Obama obsessives know FAR more about the Republican process than do I.
Seemingly it comforts you to pretend that the only people who call BS on Obama’s BS are Republicans.
hahahahaha
Clime Acts
@gaz:
Thank you, spaz.
Nemesis
Let me guarantee every BJer one thing:
Raynd Paul will not be the VP nominee. No freaking way. At all. Nevah.
Yutsano
@Nemesis: No. But it would be fun if it did happen. Not to mention Daddy Ron isn’t coming out of Tampa empty-handed. This rodent copulation has a purpose for him no doubt. We just get to sit back and be entertained by it.
Hungry Joe
The GOP convention will probably be like most GOP conventions since 1972: choreographed down to the microsecond.
Brachiator
@Southern Beale:
I don’t know. I always get the impression that libertarians are like believers in a flat Earth or creationists. They seem to live in a fantasy land where politics is not even necessary, and you only have individuals, voluntary associations, and contracts. I don’t see them as caring much about political institutions, nor do I see that they even understand much about either history or politics. You cannot blame the established political parties for what libertarians believe, or even expect them to ever “return to the fold.”
As an aside, I continue to be fascinated at the number of computer geeks who are avowed libertarians. And yet their perspective is oddly skewed. They want to keep the government away from the Internet so that they can download movies and music and play video games in peace, seem to think that SF novels and comic books are simply alternate realities, and yet a core of them have absolutely no problem with the government requiring backdoors that easily let them snoop on emails, Facebook pages, Skype calls. They insist that the government can easily identify “the bad guys,” and anyway they are all championship hackers who can invoke an invisibility shield and hide their own activities if necessary.
flukebucket
My Daddy just turned 75 and he told that as a young man he was always told that he would never, ever see a dime of social security. He laughs about that every time he gets a check now.
And libertarians never win elections because they all vote Republican.
The Tragically Flip
“And libertarians never win elections because they all vote Republican.”
Also because they hover at 1% of the electorate.
gaz
@Brachiator:
Aspergers is the leading cause of libertarianism.
IrishGirl
I am truly enjoying this. Paul while in Nevada this weekend had the balls to actually say, his followers have “infiltrated the Republican party”. If I was the average GOP party member, I would be pissed off.
Keep it up Republicans! Tee-hee
JGabriel
__
__
Uncle Cosmo:
My apologies. I hate it when “supposedly good liberals” spout incorrect history or economics too — just had a heated discussion with a family member over Social Security this morning, had to explain that no, SS is not going bankrupt.
Anyway, I repeated an analysis of McGovern’s nomination process that I’d read elsewhere (don’t remember where), and it was wrong. Mea culpa, Uncle Cosmos.
.
StringonaStick
@IrishGirl: “Infiltrate”; that’s a good one, though the NPR story used the word “infected”.
I was going to address the “most Libertarians are ex-liberals” BS, but everyone here did such a fine job that I’d just be gilding the lily – oh look, a GOLD reference. Careful, all the Libertarians will either faint, get a boner, or do the former because of the latter.
gaz
@Clime Acts:
I’d come up with a derogatory mangling of your screenname, but alas, you beat me to it.
The Tragically Flip
“Careful, all the Libertarians will either faint, get a boner, or do the former because of the latter.”
If they had equipment large enough to require so much blood to fill it as to induce fainting, they wouldn’t be so obsessed with guns.
Right, so we’ve ascertained that libertarians are liberals except that they’re obsessed with the gold standard, love guns, deny climate change, and reliably vote for the party that opposes all their social values because it cuts their taxes. Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
Heliopause
Fuck those people. The stupid shits should have read the rules. Caucusing ain’t beanbag.
Barry
@JGabriel: “I think that ship’s already sailed – this is Paul’s third run for President. Once requires an enormous ego; to run a third time, after already failing to even get your party’s nomination the first two times, requires brass balls the size of Epcot.”
Not really, if you can make a profit at it. At that point it just requires the ability to lie in very, very large quantities, with zero conscience.
Chris
@Steve in DC:
My own experience is that they’re mostly ex-GOP. Specifically voters for whom the Bush years tainted the conservative brand so badly that they just can’t go on pretending that it’s okay to be in that crowd. But while they can admit that they were wrong, they just can’t bring themselves to admit that the other side might have been right, so they retreat from politics and go into this “both sides do it, maaann,” “there’s just nothing good that can come of government, maaann” cop-out.
@Brachiator:
I think this is a really good analogy.
Libertarians are to America what fundamentalists are to religion. They’ve got an idealized, romanticized, rose-tinted, insanely oversimplified (and riddled with errors) view of The Way Our Tribe Was Founded. They firmly believe that all of life’s problems were answered then. They believe that everything that’s gone wrong with the world today is because of the corruption of the pure, pristine One True Message of their founding
deityfathers. And they believe that we could solve all our problems simply by taking society back to the way things were back then.Substitute “Constitution” for “Bible,” and it’s the same thing, which probably explains why there’s so much overlap between the two groups, as counter-intuitive as that might seem at first.
ETA: or maybe the simplest explanations are the best, and “libertarian” really does mean “what conservatives call themselves when they’re trying to get laid.”
swearyanthony
From, I think, the Benenator:
http://www.pressherald.com/news/Delegate-fight-Snowe-LePage-today-at-convention.html
“Romney, meanwhile, dispatched his top attorney, Benjamin Ginsberg, to the civic center. Ginsberg, known for his work for former President George W. Bush during the 2000 election recount, was at times positioned near the main stage, holding a convention rule book.”
Yep. Ben Ginsberg is now stuck fighting off the minions of Dr Ron Paul, PhD, MD, Nobel Prize Laureate (nominee), &c, on behalf of the Romneybot 3000.
It’s almost enough to make you believe in Karma. I hope he remembered to take along a bunch of copies of The Constitution Of The United States (For Slower Children) picture books.
Barry
@joes527: “It is fun to watch and all. But anyone who thinks that a disorderly primary predicts a loss in the general has forgotten 2008.”
I’m too lazy to Google, but IIRC things were wrapped up at this point for the Dems in 2008. The self-styled PUMAs were whining, but it didn’t matter.
Barry
@Canuckistani Tom: “I’m wondering if Romney’s going to divert some of the UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH to anti-Paul ads. Freak out the right by saying things like he’ll get rid of the FBI, CIA, and USAF (They’re not in the constitution, irresponsible not to speculate, etc) and then they’re be nothing to stop the hordes of terrorists and drug smugglers, bla bla bla”
As much as I’m sweet on the idea of a Tampa meltdown, I imagine that by now Romney and the GOP powers that be (such as they are) will lean reeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaal hard on any Paulites who might make trouble.
Not all of them are subject to pressure, but the POTB only need to strip the movement down to a small enough group to be
tasered like mother-f—–rsshown the door.Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
Aside from the various quirks they display that you mentioned, the biggest one for me is that they contend that PCs and the Internet just magically appeared out of the air, apparently, not acknowledging that the evil government’s massive research into the space program made the PC (and all the other smaller things) possible, and then that DARPA made the internet happened when their precious corporations refused to even consider it a possibility.
The IT field as we know it today would not exist without government creating the environment for it to thrive.
swearyanthony
@Brachiator:
http://politicalfriends.prophpbb.com/topic2149.html
Just sayin…
MomSense
I listened to a call-in show/interview on Maine Public Broadcasting today and the R Senate Candidate Bennett was asked by a Paul delegate to comment on the convention. He said it was a “travesty”. She said that Romney had several attorneys there to challenge every vote.
There was also a rally on Friday night with about 400-500 Paul folks in attendance. I heard a rumor that Romney folks were spreading some false information to try and thwart the Paul delegates the next day.
But all of these things are just distractions compared to the radical platform they passed. The Republican party has veered off into an extreme place. Margaret Chase Smith would be appalled.
swearyanthony
@MomSense: Sure. But in the meantime, the normal humans (i.e. the rest of us) get to enjoy the Paulites and the Romneybots sulking like 4 year olds as they screw with each other.
MomSense
http://www.mainegop.com/about-2/mission-and-platform/
They want to protect America from Sharia Law and defund Planned Parenthood.
MomSense
@swearyanthony
It sure is entertaining. I’ll give you that.
swearyanthony
@MomSense: I’m off on the side with a big bucket of popcorn barracking like a hockey fan, screaming “fight, fight fight!”
Brachiator
@Villago Delenda Est:
Perhaps this just goes along with the libertarian tendency to ignore history or to revise it along two models: either a government role never existed, or the government role was always negative.
Martin
Technicality?
Caucuses are DESIGNED to deliver votes for the most involved candidate, not the least undesirable one. That’s the point. If everyone was so uninvested in Romney as a candidate that they couldn’t even bother to participate in the process, then it’s good that he’s losing those delegates.
This is what you need if you want a result other than ‘lesser of two evils’ – you need an actively involved electorate. Good on Paul for driving that point home. I hope it hurts badly enough that people remember it.
mdblanche
@MomSense:
Margaret Chase Smith lost her fight with Joe McCarthy a long time ago.
Tonal Crow
@Schlemizel:
That’d be interesting. Do you think Mitter (Mitt+Bullshitter = Mitter) will be able to put off his co-loser selection that long? I suspect not, because the purity pressure from the teatards is just going to keep rising. He tried to shake the Etch-a-Sketch recently with the gay foreign-policy advisor, got whipped by the Tablibangelists, and backed down. I suspect winger pressure will force him to choose someone with excellent teatard credentials, like DeMint.
Tonal Crow
@MomSense:
I just tried to check Lincoln’s tachometer, but the ground was littered with small metal parts, and the tach stand had the sign “Broken due to overspeed. Repairs might be impossible” on it.
Concerned Citizen
Ron Paul is one crazy bastard, but he has the geeks on his side. He’s fun to watch.
RadioOne
I think Ron Paul illustrates why primaries are fundamentally different than a general election, and why the media covering party primaries like a general election is wrong. Ron Paul is not going to win the nomination, but he is going to fuck with Romney by stealing caucus delegates in all of the caucus states. Why? I guess to influence even more young Americans that Ayn Rand’s philosophy is palatable.
MomSense
@mdblanche
Maine is not going to claim Joe McCarthy–Wisconsin will forever have to deal with that mess.
I’m thinking more of Bill Cohen, Peter Mills, and Olympia when she was still a Rep.
@Tonal Crow
Definitely a total loss.