Ron Paul wins Virgin Islands with 29%...

Jefferson3000

Expert Expediter
But most of the big media outlets are calling it another Romney win.

Ron Paul gets first win in Virgin Islands but all news agencies report Romney - Washington DC Conservative | Examiner.com

It looks as if they are changing the story for the spin. Ordinarily, they report the "straw poll" winner, even if they end up with very little delegate-wise, eg. Santorum in Colorado and Minnesota, where Paul cleaned up probably 80% of the precinct level delegates. It was a similar story for Iowa and Maine. Now however, the story is on Romney, even though he lost the popular vote, but gained more delegates, who were mostly party officials who got themselves elected.
 

layoutshooter

Veteran Expediter
Retired Expediter
But most of the big media outlets are calling it another Romney win.

Ron Paul gets first win in Virgin Islands but all news agencies report Romney - Washington DC Conservative | Examiner.com

It looks as if they are changing the story for the spin. Ordinarily, they report the "straw poll" winner, even if they end up with very little delegate-wise, eg. Santorum in Colorado and Minnesota, where Paul cleaned up probably 80% of the precinct level delegates. It was a similar story for Iowa and Maine. Now however, the story is on Romney, even though he lost the popular vote, but gained more delegates, who were mostly party officials who got themselves elected.[/QUOTE

Were you expecting them to start reporting in a fair, unbiased manner this late in the game?
 

davekc

Senior Moderator
Staff member
Fleet Owner
No matter the channel, I don't think they even mention him but on rare occasions. Good to finally see him get a win somewhere even though few would know about it.
 

muttly

Veteran Expediter
Congrats to Paul for his win. They should just get rid of the caucuses all together and just have people come to vote on a primary ballot. It will leave less for the dilly dallying and possible shananigans.
 

Turtle

Administrator
Staff member
Retired Expediter
The Virgin Islands doesn't portion out delegates by popular vote. Instead, voters there elect delegates who go to the convention in Tampa. The delegates elected are Luis Martinez, April Newland, and John Clendenin, who are Romney supporters, Warren Bruce Cole who was an uncommitted delegate who then backed Romney after being elected as a delegate, and the lone Paul supporter, Robert Max Schanfarber. That information is what is posted on the Virgin Islands GOP Web site.


Winning the popular vote in the Virgin Islands is like being the only van in Butte, MT and getting a First Out after a dry run.
 

moose

Veteran Expediter
Well,this is flat out wrong that in such a nice place on earth,
they are still Virgins when they old enough to vote.
which is probably the rezone why they so out of tuch to even consider Ron Paul.
 

RLENT

Veteran Expediter
But most of the big media outlets are calling it another Romney win. It looks as if they are changing the story for the spin.
I'm shocked .... :rolleyes:

Wonder how much media play this one will get ;):

Paul supporters seize control of Clark County GOP party

BY LAURA MYERS
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Posted: Mar. 10, 2012 | 10:48 a.m.

Supporters of GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul on Saturday effectively took control of the Clark County Republican Party by winning election to 14 executive board positions, or two-thirds of the ruling body.

The election came during the county GOP convention where Paul delegates dominated, winning as many as half of the 1,382 delegates nominated to the state convention May 2-4 in Sparks.


Rest of the article at the link below:

Paul supporters seize control of Clark County GOP party
 

RLENT

Veteran Expediter
Well,this is flat out wrong that in such a nice place on earth,
they are still Virgins when they old enough to vote.
which is probably the rezone why they so out of tuch to even consider Ron Paul.
Moose,

Thanks for the humor ....

.... see ya in Tampa ....
 

Jefferson3000

Expert Expediter
Congrats to Paul for his win. They should just get rid of the caucuses all together and just have people come to vote on a primary ballot. It will leave less for the dilly dallying and possible shananigans.

There is plenty of shenanigans to go around in the primary states. Getting rid of a caucus might only perpetuate it. At least with a caucus they can count your precinct's votes right in front of you. That can be compared to the posted tally later, which is where many of the problems have occurred this cycle. Also, it doesn't help when a couple of the states hire a firm comprised of former Romney campaign employees to run the caucus for them, as did Iowa and Nevada.
 

RLENT

Veteran Expediter
As more people awaken from their deep slumber and brush the sleep from their eyes .... further horror ensues ....... oh the humanity !:

Ron Paul’s Devious Plan to Steal the Presidency


(Note: the comments are almost as good as the article - the indignant losers fall into unrestrained ad hominem attacks and name-calling, as a consequence of having their own rules used to defeat them ...)
 

Jefferson3000

Expert Expediter
As more people awaken from their deep slumber and brush the sleep from their eyes .... further horror ensues ....... oh the humanity !:

Ron Paul’s Devious Plan to Steal the Presidency


(Note: the comments are almost as good as the article - the indignant losers fall into unrestrained ad hominem attacks and name-calling, as a consequence of having their own rules used to defeat them ...)

Well that's what struck me about the whole Virgin Islands affair. The news media likes to take states with unbound delegates and administer them proportionately by popular vote, even though the "beauty" contest has nothing to do with it The delegate process is one of electing people to vote at the convention on that state's behalf. In the case of many states, the delegates are not bound to vote for any particular candidate. Santorum won the popular vote in MN, CO and IA among others, but because he really has no infrastructure of supporters, he will most likely not have any delegates from those states to support him come convention time. Nonetheless, up until the VI caucus, the media always touted the winner of the popular vote, but suddenly decided with the VI that the delegates accrued were more important.

Because he is not an establishment backed candidate, Paul is the only candidate that I am aware of, that has an organization directed at teaching newcomers how to run as delegates within the Party. They teach them Robert's Rules of Parliamentary Procedure and network them with others running. So when Paul gets up and says "We're winning delegates," he really means it.

However, of equally shocking value is that he's not just getting his people into some of the unbound delegate positions, but that they are being elected as bound delegates for Romney, Gingrich and Santorum as well. At the convention, if no one has the 1144 votes that are needed to win, then for most states, the bound delegates become unbound and can vote for whomever they choose. In contrast, Georgia has a rule stating that the delegates are bound to the winning candidate for the first THREE rounds of voting. However, if that candidate falls below 35% in any round, (which is highly likely in a 3-4 man race) then for the next vote, they can vote unbound.

From what I've been hearing, at least on precinct level, Paul supporters hold about 90%+ of MN, 75% of CO, a good 75% of IA and almost all of ME delegates. You can manipulate polls with the right wording, make the Diebold machines lie, you can take two days to count a caucus while you figure out how to throw away 15,000 Paul votes, but can't dispose of live voters at a convention.
 

davekc

Senior Moderator
Staff member
Fleet Owner
I don't see Paul doing much unless he goes third party as that article suggests which will guarantee a Obama win. He may wind up with some more delegates but not enough to do more than to be able to give a speech at the convention. As Jefferson pointed out, it is a hard gig to overtake that Romney machine.
 

AMonger

Veteran Expediter
I don't see Paul doing much unless he goes third party as that article suggests which will guarantee a Obama win. He may wind up with some more delegates but not enough to do more than to be able to give a speech at the convention. As Jefferson pointed out, it is a hard gig to overtake that Romney machine.

I don't think that was Jefferson's point.

Regardless, if the GOP nominee isn't Dr. Paul, then Obama might as well be reelected. A rose by any other name/a dung heap by any other name... If the next president isn't Ron Paul, then it will be either Obama or Obama by another name and lighter skin, which means despotism either way.

--

You know the problem with bad cops? They make the other 5% look bad.
 

aristotle

Veteran Expediter
Why does Ron Paul promote himself as a member of the Republican Party? He left once before to run for US President on the Libertarian Party ticket. Ron Paul despises the GOP. He doesn't rally to help the party or individual GOP candidates seeking office. Ron Paul is a self-promoting, self-serving hypocrite, plain and simple. Ron Paul uses the GOP like a rented mule. It's way past time to call this loser out. He's a joke of a candidate and does real harm to the party he professes to be his own.

Should Ron Paul flirt with a third party run, thus throwing the election to Obama, his name will be Mudd forevermore. Those giving aid to a desperate third party run, particularly son Rand, will find themselves marginalized to the point of irrelevancy.
 
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Jefferson3000

Expert Expediter
I don't see Paul doing much unless he goes third party as that article suggests which will guarantee a Obama win. He may wind up with some more delegates but not enough to do more than to be able to give a speech at the convention. As Jefferson pointed out, it is a hard gig to overtake that Romney machine.

Well, Paul certainly won't have enough delegates from the states with hard or "bound" delegates, as long as Romney has money to spend buying off the GOP officials. It will be an uphill climb for Paul, but Romney is not going to have enough to clinch it either. He currently only has 354 bound delegates. The unbound ones are still up for grabs, as the process is not complete and the people aren't chosen yet. If any of the other two drop out, their bound delegates become unbound and can vote for whomever.

More and more, people are talking about what is behind the scenes that is very different from the disinformation presented by the big news outlets. Paul's grassroots strategy is similar to that used by Ronald Reagan in 1976, when he nearly pulled a coup against the incumbent Gerald Ford.

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Rick Santorum, Ron Paul On Track To Get Most Of Iowa's Delegates

WASHINGTON -- Rick Santorum and Ron Paul are best positioned to win the most delegates in Iowa as the Republican primary process moves forward, making Mitt Romney the odd man out, state insiders told The Huffington Post.
Santorum and Romney finished first and second on Jan. 3, with Paul finishing about 3,000 votes behind the 29,000 votes Santorum and Romney both got.
Rep. Paul (R-Texas) is currently estimated by The Associated Press to have zero delegates in Iowa. The AP numbers give former Sen. Santorum (R-Pa.) 13 delegates and former Massachusetts Gov. Romney 12. But Iowa Republican operatives scoffed at the AP figure.
"Can I just be bold and tell you that they don't know what they're talking about," Steve Scheffler, one of the state's three Republican National Committee members, told The Huffington Post. "Our delegates are not tied to the percentages of who got what in the straw poll."
"That's just not valid information at all," he reiterated. "That's just not correct information at all."
Santorum, banking on the fact that delegates are not "bound" by rule or law in Iowa to vote for any presidential candidate at the Republican National Convention -- which is similar to other caucus states -- has predicted he'll win the "overwhelming majority" of Iowa's 28 delegates.
But as he is likely to find out in many caucus states, Santorum faces a roadblock: Paul's passionate and organized supporters, working to position themselves for spots as delegates at the national convention in Tampa, Fla., this August.
"They're going to be feisty and they're going to fight," said Craig Robinson, a former state GOP official who now writes a popular state politics blog, The Iowa Republican.
"I think that Santorum will get the delegates he should get but I think Ron Paul will get way more delegates than he should get," Robinson said, adding that he worries that Paul could potentially give Iowa a black eye by winning the most delegates.
The winner of Iowa's caucuses has already changed once, after the state Republican Party announced Santorum the winner three weeks after saying Romney had won the night of the caucuses.
"It would be terrible for Iowa if you had Romney the winner on caucus day, three weeks later Santorum, and then three months later Ron Paul," Robinson said.
But Paul's supporters are not worried about the state's reputation. They just want to snatch delegate spots, and are prepared to use all the flexibility allowed by the rules to get them.
"Ron Paul's respecting the voters of Iowa and the delegates of Iowa who represent them by campaigning for delegates. He didn't just stop at the straw poll on Jan. 3," said Drew Ivers, a member of Iowa's 17-member central committee who was a co-chair of Paul's campaign in Iowa.
Paul's supporters drew attention this past Saturday when they caused a ruckus at several county conventions in Iowa. In Polk County, which includes Des Moines, they urged the county chairman, Kevin McLaughlin, to allow them to nominate delegates to the state convention who had not been elected at the Jan. 3 caucuses.
"They gave us the impression that we owed them something," McLaughlin told HuffPost. "It was like, let's throw out the rules and do it our way. And let's throw temper tantrums if you won't."
Ivers, sensitive to that criticism, said that Paul's supports were "engaging in the normal healthy process."
"It seems to be a little bit concerning among some of the regular Republicans that we are respectful enough to ask for delegates, and because the other [campaigns] are not it makes us an exception," Ivers said.
It's not as if the Paul movement in Iowa is simply a bunch of outsiders crashing the gates of the state GOP. In fact, the state party chairman -- as of early February -- is another former co-chair of Paul's presidential campaign in Iowa, A.J. Spiker. Spiker was elected by the central committee after former chairman Matt Strawn resigned.
Spiker automatically gets one of the 28 delegate spots at the national convention. He did not return an e-mail seeking comment, but Spiker is a likely vote for Paul at the convention.
Yet the Paul line of attack in Iowa is both a frontal assault and an under-the-radar operation. Ryan Rhodes, a Tea Party activist in Iowa, said that as the delegate process goes forward to the congressional district conventions on April 21 and then the state convention on June 15 and 16, there will be an element of suspense about which delegates running for national convention spots are Paul supporters.
"You're not going to know how half these people vote until Tampa. You might have Ron Paul people in there who you won't know how they're going to vote until they get into the arena," Rhodes told HuffPost.
Ivers admitted as much.
"Because the other three [campaigns] are doing very little, there tends to be some caution about the Ron Paul people," Ivers said. "So it does tend to drive the Ron Paul supporters a little more quiet in the way they speak about the candidate. A little more cautious is a better word."
The common theme among Iowa Republicans who spoke with HuffPost is that Paul's supporters have been the only ones who are noticeably aggressive and active so far in angling for delegate spots at the two remaining conventions in the state, all with an eye toward landing as many of the 28 delegate spots for Tampa as possible.
But Santorum is very popular among a great number of Iowa's grassroots conservative base, and so he too is expected to get around half of the delegates.
"If I had to be a betting man I would say that the Santorum and Ron Paul campaigns are best positioned to get their fair share of delegates," Scheffler, the Iowa RNC member, said. "That's where I see most of the energy coming from."
That leaves Romney as potentially the odd man out, getting just a handful of delegates. Such a scenario would only be possible if Romney and Santorum were still locked in a close fight. Romney's state co-chair, Brian Kennedy, did not return phone calls.
But if the national primary does remain competitive through May or June, that will make conventions in many states into high-stakes battles for delegates to the national convention, essentially setting the stage for a floor fight in Tampa.
If that is the case, Santorum is looking to caucus states like Iowa, and other primary states like Arizona where delegate rules are very loose and open to interpretation, in order to chip away at the delegate lead that Romney has in current estimates. The AP count has Romney with 495 delegates to 252 for Santorum, 131 for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and 48 for Paul.
The magic number that clinches the nomination is 1,144 delegates.
The only problem for Santorum is that his attempts at prying delegates away is limited by the Paul campaign's determination to secure their own number of seats in Tampa.
 

davekc

Senior Moderator
Staff member
Fleet Owner
Interesting info and might be some pretty good entertainment if it goes down that path. I'll go with anyone thats not Obama.;)
 

RLENT

Veteran Expediter
I don't see Paul doing much unless he goes third party as that article suggests which will guarantee a Obama win. He may wind up with some more delegates but not enough to do more than to be able to give a speech at the convention. As Jefferson pointed out, it is a hard gig to overtake that Romney machine.
Yeah .... and many folks didn't "see" any possibility of a brokered or contested convention either .... :rolleyes:

Wonder what the take on that would be if it were polled again today ? :rolleyes:

Daily Caller: ‘Brokered’ GOP convention? Get ready, say political strategists

Quote from the above article:

A brokered convention today would likely be far messier than in 1976, Shirley cautioned. A better parallel, he said, might be the Democratic convention in 1924, where no candidate was chosen until the 108th ballot.
“Who’s to say you won’t see a situation like that?” Shirley, whose PR firm is working with the campaign of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, said. “That was over after 16 days of balloting.”



It could be end up being a bloodbath ... and that might be exactly what is needed for the party ....
 
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