What's going on here? Over the last few weeks, while skimming news stories, something has started to stand out: Ron Paul supporters are going to the Republican State Conventions and coming away with a majority of the delegates to the Republican National Convention in Tampa this August.
Today the news that jumped out at me was Maine:
AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — With Mitt Romney's nomination all but decided, Ron Paul supporters wrested control of the Maine Republican Convention and elected a majority slate supporting the Texas congressman to the GOP national convention, party officials said as the two-day convention neared its end Sunday. The results gave the Texas congressman a late state victory.
The names of 15 at-large delegates from Maine to the GOP nominating convention in Tampa, Fla., were posted Sunday as votes for the other delegation seats remained undecided. Maine is allotted a total of 24 delegates to the national convention.
Paul wins majority of delegates from Maine GOP
A week ago it was
Washington, which followed
Iowa and
Minnesota:
Ron Paul's 2012 campaign has won the majority of Washington's delegates to the Republican National Convention, and a number of other states are expected to follow suit, pointing to a hectic convention in which Mitt Romney's path to the nomination may face a major insurgent opponent.
Washington is now the third state, after Iowa and Minnesota, in which Ron Paul has locked up at least half of the state's nominating delegates. In order to be officially entered in nomination at the Tampa, Fla., convention, he needs to secure half or more of the delegates in five states, and as of Thursday, he looks poised to grab a majority of delegates in other states like North Dakota and Maine in coming weeks.
Ron Paul's 2012 campaign has taken an unorthodox tack, hoping to draw state delegates to his camp rather than simply winning the popular vote. As such, he is stacking up delegates who once backed Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum and other fallen candidates.
Ron Paul 2012 Wins Majority Of Washington Delegates To Convention, Other States Expected To Follow
Evidently, this is not some strange phenomenon. It's actually a strategy that Ron Paul has been working towards all along, which he calls the “delegate strategy.”
In a process that has turned off many Republican voters this election cycle, rank and file party members were surprised to find out that in many cases this year, their votes didn’t really count. In some states, like Missouri for example, the state’s taxpayers paid millions of dollars to fund a GOP primary election monitored and facilitated by the state’s election system. They were angered to learn that the primary was meaningless because state Republican Party officials were going to choose the state’s delegates at a separate caucus, held at another time and officiated and insured by the party itself.
That is just one example of the Ron Paul ‘delegate strategy’. The Texas Congressman all but bypassed the various primaries’ popular votes and instead focused his campaign’s energy, people and dollars on the delegate-choosing caucuses. When the Missouri Caucus finally came around just under a month ago, the Gingrich-Santorum alliance appeared to be on course to keep GOP front-runner Mitt Romney from capturing the necessary 1,144 delegates to secure the Republican nomination.
Colo., Minn. GOP delegates chosen; Paul strategy working
Wow! If I were a Republican, I would be angry too. Heck, if I was a Romney SuperPAC that spent millions of dollars bashing other Republican candidates I'd be livid. Wouldn't that money have been better spent working to win the delegates at the caucuses instead of the votes of the primary voters that didn't count?
This is just yet another example of why Mitt Romney is not fit to lead this country. He has been out done yet again. He had his eyes on the primaries while Ron Paul and his supporters had their eyes on the contests that really count in the end. Remember in 2008 when President Obama was asked why he was fit to lead? And he responded, just watch how I run my campaign. And wasn't that a glorious sight to be seen? Watching how Romney is running his campaign, and all the embarrassing moments, just proves even more why Romney is not fit to lead this country.
Is Ron Paul going to win enough delegates to take over the Republican Convention? Probably not, but reading some of these articles, neither are the Republicans going to have the happy convention with the Party rallying around Romney that they might have hoped they were going to orchestrate.