United Liberty

With concern rising over rule changes dealing with selection of state delegates to future conventions and talk of a floor fight growing, Team Romney has struck a deal with Ron Paul to avoid any embarrassment today:

Republican Party officials struck a last-minute deal Monday night in an attempt to avert a messy convention floor battle with supporters of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas).

Supporters of the libertarian lawmaker were spoiling for a fight over an attempted change to the GOP delegate rules aimed at limiting their ability to gain delegate slots at future conventions. But the bigger concern for presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign was assuaging concerns from a number of powerful longtime party stalwarts that the new rule infringed on states’ rights to determine their own delegates.

In an email to Republican National Committee (RNC) members, James Bopp, an Indiana delegate and GOP power player, said he and other conservative power brokers had reached an agreement with Romney’s emissaries to end the dispute, which threatened to be a distraction on the first full day of convention events.
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Under the agreement, a bound delegate must vote for the presidential candidate that they are required to vote for under state law or state party rules, leaving the actual selection of delegates up to the states.

Previously, a proposal would have given presidential candidates the power to veto delegates sent by the states — a change that had Paul supporters crying foul, seeing it as an establishment attempt to stifle the upstart contingent.

There have been some worries in Republican circles about delegates aligned with Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX). During the GOP presidential primaries and caucuses, Paul’s supporters managed to win enough delegates in a handful of states to raise eyebrows. It seemed that some of his delegates would not be sat, but news broke last night that Republican leaders want to avoid any embarassment and decided to make a deal with Paul:

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul will enter the GOP convention next week with more delegates after a deal was reached avoiding a potentially embarrassing standoff with Mitt Romney.

The compromise settled a dispute over delegates from Louisiana.

“Paul will be awarded 17 of the state’s 46 delegates in the compromise,” Paul campaign chairman Jesse Benton told ABC News in an email. “The rest of the state’s delegates are expected to support Mitt Romney, the party’s presumptive nominee.”

In addition, the RNC will seat an additional Paul delegate from Massachusetts.

Supporters of Paul and Romney clashed at the Louisiana party convention in June and ended up holding dueling conventions, with each group submitting lists of delegates.

So there is some good news for Paul’s delegates, but as Brian Doherty explains, “Early word from the more hardcore and rootin-tootin Paul forces on the ‘Net is that such compromises won’t necessarily keep them pacified on the floor, and certainly won’t mean they’ll become good soldier Romney voters.”

While many of his supporters are packing state conventions hoping that they can secure enough delegate spots to cause chaos at the Republican National Convention; Ron Paul admitted yesterday that, while he’ll certainly have a sizable number of supporters in Tampa, it will not be enough to win the nomination:

GOP presidential hopeful Rep. Ron Paul (Texas) on Wednesday acknowledged to supporters that he lacked enough delegates to capture the party’s nomination.

In a statement, Paul said the campaign would “send 200 bound delegates” to the Republican National Convention to be held in Tampa, Fla., in August. “This number shatters the predictions of the pundits and talking heads and shows the seriousness of our movement,” he added.

The Texas lawmaker, however, admitted to his backers that tally was “not enough to win the nomination.”

Paul predicted that overall he would have about 500 supporters at the convention, including many Romney-bound delegates whom he said agreed with his policy positions.

Paul thanked his supporters for their “hard work and diligence,” saying the delegate total “puts us in a tremendous position to grow our movement and shape the future of the GOP.”

This was driven home even further last night when Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Ron Paul’s son, endorsed Mitt Romney on Hannity:

The delegate process isn’t over in many states, but Mitt Romney, after winning the Texas Republican primary last night, has mathematically secured enough delegates to win the GOP’s presidential nomination:

With a victory in Texas on Tuesday night, Mitt Romney secured the necessary delegates to clinch the Republican nomination that will be awarded in Tampa this summer.

“This was a big day by the way - 1,144. We finally got there,” Romney said at a Las Vegas fundraiser on Tuesday night. “It’s an honor and a privilege, an honor and a privilege, and a great responsibility. And I know the road to 1,144 was long and hard, but I also know that the road to 11/06, November 6, is also going to be long, it’s going to be hard and it’s going to be worth it because we’re going to take back the White House and get America right again.”

Shortly after the polls closed in Texas at 9 p.m. Tuesday night, Romney was projected to finally obtain the needed 1,144 delegates, according to The Associated Press.

As I have previously mentioned, I am a Ron Paul supporter and have served as a grassroots coordinator and served in the delegate process. These write-ups are not so much “news” as they are “views of the revolution” from an activist’s point of view. I had originally done a recap of this past weekend’s state conventions. That can still be found below after I discuss the big developments from yesterday.

So yesterday afternoon I started seeing twitter postings that caught my eye, I then proceeded to open up my email inbox and read the following message from Dr. Paul.

Almost instantly, I saw a few retweets from Drudge Report on my feed. “Paul’s Out,” screamed the headline…it was yet another example of why I’m so glad I started boycotting that hack’s site almost a month ago over his complete silence of anything relating to CISPA (can’t make Republicans look bad). But I digress…

What proceeded over the next couple of hours was nothing short of information overload: Media outlets basically running with the MSM fallacy of Paul leaving the race or suspending his campaign mixed with Paul-friendly sites trying to squelch that misinformation with their own media surge. It finally got to the point where the campaign had to send out another communication. There were also fellow activists either talking like it was the end of the world or theorizing about how it was this Machiavellian stroke of sheer genius. And naturally, there have been surly comments of Paul “selling out” or trying to set up his son’s political future.

While Republicans have constantly tried to dismiss his campaign, Ron Paul has certainly showed that there is a strong battle for the heart and soul of the party; pitting limited government conservatives and libertarians up against the establishment. But Paul hinted yesterday that, while his campaign has had success in exposing these fissures, he has decided to scale back his operation:

An announcement from Rep. Ron Paul indicates that the Republican presidential candidate will no longer actively campaign for the GOP nomination, but will continue to work to secure delegates at upcoming Republican state conventions. “Moving forward, however, we will no longer spend resources campaigning in primaries in states that have not yet voted,” said Paul, in a statement released Monday afternoon. “Doing so with any hope of success would take many tens of millions of dollars we simply do not have.”

But the longtime congressman from Texas, who’s making his third bid for the White House, says he’ll continue to try and secure delegates to the Republican convention in Tampa, Florida in late August.

“Our campaign will continue to work in the state convention process. We will continue to take leadership positions, win delegates, and carry a strong message to the Republican National Convention that Liberty is the way of the future,” adds Paul, in his statement.

Paul hasn’t suspended his campaign, as some media outlets are reporting. The delegate strategy that his supporters are carrying out at caucuses and state conventions is very much alive. However, it seems that Paul is more interested in gaining enough delegates to make changes to the platform, rather than to ruin Romney’s chance at the nomination.