RP is Still Eligible for the Republican Nomination
So are Ralph Nader, Barack Obama Hillary Clinton. and Charles Jay. So what? by rtbohan
(libertarian)
Friday, July 11, 2008
This year, my guess is that Barack Obama has the best chance of the bunch.
This little rant is brought out by a recent column by Heather Saarela([link edited for length]), and by a message to Nolan Chart columnists posted in the lounge. But I am serious about what I am saying here.
In spite of state conventions, primaries and pledges, it is true that the delegates to the Republican Naitonal Convention can nominate anyone they choose. Saarela has built on this to establish a project to distribute DVDs of Ron Paul to the delegates to the national convention. Her belief is that the delegates will watch the DVDs, become convinced by the message and nominate Ron Paul, or at least adopt his platform.
The idea of distributing the DVDs is not without merit. But the delegates selected for the national convention are not the best target for the message. Many of them, believe it or not, actually want John McCain to be President. Nothing is going to sway them. Many of them are from state and local Republican party leadership. These are the people who worked so hard to prevent Paul from speaking at the state conventions, and did their best to silence the Paul delegates to those conventions. They know the message and don't want to be bothered. Some of them (too few) are Ron Paul delegates. But these include people who have sometimes traveled across three states to hear Paul deliver his message in person, and all of them probably have Paul DVDs of their own. Other delegates are people who are delegates to the national convention as an honorary thing, something like being chosen to be a Republican Elector (as some of them certainly also are). Others are delegates because it gives them a chance to shop at The Mall of America, or go to a Twins or Vikings game or visit the Ron Paul rally during the more boring sessions of the convention. Most of these people will treat the DVDs like any other piece of unsolicited junk mail.
The Republican convention can still pick Ron Paul as the nominee, but they won't. They can pick any person they choose who meets the constitutional requirements to serve as President. But a decision by the convention to pick a candidate other than John McCain would be made only if the delegates and the party leadership felt that candidate would result in more votes for the party this year. That brings us to the other four I mentioned. Charles Jay, the candidate of the Boston Tea Party, might be selected because he might keep some of the libertarian Paul supporters voting Republican, and he might draw votes from Bob Barr and prevent the Libertarian Party from being viewed as a viable alternative choice for Consrvative Republicans. Ralph Nader might be a good choice as Barack Obama, the candidate of peace and change, scrambles for a more belligerent and centrist position. This might add the progressive Democrats, the Move On types, to the neocon vote and allow the Republicans to win. Hillary Clinton would be a wonderful choice. All of the Clinton supporters, the women and the "bitter white working class men" whose support she brags about, into the Republican column.
The Republican Party is going to nominate John McCain because they believe he is the Republican candidate who has the best chance of winning, or at least running a close race. At this point, the polls are showing that Obama will win by a large margin, and that the Republican delegation to Congress decimated([link edited for length] ballot) . I do not place much faith in polls taken this long before the actual vote, but the professional politicians do. That is why I think the most reasonable alternative for the Republican Party would be to nominate Barack Obama. That way, their candidate would win the election, he might bring Republicans as well as Democrats in on his coat tails, and the Ron Paul supporters would be driven out of the Party. That's a "win, win, win" situation for the current Republican leadership.
The 2008 Republican National Convention is not going to nominate Ron Paul for President. Ron Paul knows that. I know that. Heather Saarela knows that. It is not going to nominate Jay, or Nader, or Clinton or Obama either. It is going to nominate John McCain, and providing the delegates with more information about Ron Paul's platform is not going to change that. It might put some Paul positions in the platform, but neither the candidate nor the party is obligated to mention the platform after the convention is over, and the voters are certainly not going to read it. So sending DVDs to the delegates is largely a wasted effort.
On the other hand, Ron Paul has shown himself to be the most effective spokesman for a libertarian/conservative position since Barry Goldwater. Since the Paul campaign, as Ron Paul said, was about the message and not about the candidate, using Ron Paul videos and DVDs is an excellent idea. Of course, this is being done already on You tube, and has been a major factor in the growth of the movement. But now the movement needs to expand to those who do not surf the web, who are a little frightened of reading things on the web for fear of viruses, or do not own a computer. The people, in other words, who are watching television rather than sitting at the computer terminal.
A Republican National Convention will nominate Ron Paul or another candidate running on the same platform when they believe that the candidate has the support of enough voters to win the election. The job at this point is not with the delegates to this years convention, but with the voters. The DVDs and videos now seen on the net need to be on television. The material needs to be with supporters, or groups of supporters, who will put the DVDs or videos on local television stations or through local cable providers as DVDs. The Paul campaign for the Republican nomination this year is over. The task of informing the voters is still very present and very urgent.
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You are a riot. May I propose a couple of other candidates the republicans could nominate. I would put forth Mary Ruwart and George Phillies. Either one could probably take the big L die hard traditional Libertarian that feels so abandunded by their party and turn them into little l republicans. In Mary's favor she might bring along the Woman vote the Hillary was working so hard to capture (half the voting population). In George's favor the Large Wiccan vote could put Massachusetts into contention as well as removing one New Hampshire contender. If the Republican Party some how removed their delusional glasses and picked ether of the two they would capture my vote. They only need about 1 or 2 million more and they take California from Obama.
So could Jesse Ventura...the date to announce is July 27th. But, we all sit back and watch Barack take over the Fascist States of Amerika. Change! Hope! Lies!
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