He wouldn't walk down the street eating lutefisk on a stick. He wouldn't say he loved lefska. He wouldn't promise to name an aircraft carrier the USS Uffdah.
Still, our libertarian Minnesota political whizzes love him, and they're about to prove it by sending a disporportionate number of Paul supporters to the national convention and by ensuring that his ideas carry weight at the state-party level.
On day two of the convention, Ron Paul supporters really get a chance to flex their muscle as the 2,000-plus delegates elect a slate to represent Minnesota at the national Republican convention in Tampa. Paul delegates have already claimed 20 of the 24 delegates elected from the state’s congressional districts. Three delegate slots automatically go to party officers. Another 13 national delegates are chosen on Saturday. With the force behind them, it’s possible -- maybe probable -- that 33 of the state’s 40 delegates will be pledged to nominate Ron Paul.
It parallels the libertarian/Paul movement in Iowa and several other states, and the immediate upshot is that his ideas will not be totally ignored in Tampa. The time beyond the convention is fuzzier, but it can't hurt the liberty cause to have a young cadre of smart operatives pulling the strings in the middle levels of the GOP bureaucracy.
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I've attended political conventions for decades as a reporter, paid operative, and delegate. An outstanding feature is the blatent cluelessness of of many party officials and most delegates. They think the purpose is to bloviate on issues. The nearest comparison would be a mechanic who thinks his job is to expound this theories of automotive design while you're paying him to grind your valves.
The Minnesota Paulites illustrate the usefulness of highly skilled tinkering after learning the party rules and mores inside and out. When you've mastered the technical aspects, then the time comes for using the machine to get to where you want to go, in this case from a higher level of statism to a a lower one. It's incremental and tedious, but it stands a better chance of reinstating our Constitution than loading up our M4geries.
1 comment:
Sounds like what my brother described as the tactics in Missouri as well. They got a multi-jurisdictional police response when the Paul supporters wouldn't let the RNC idiots hijack the county caucus. Bring up a point of procedure, get a police helicopter circling overhead. Try to videotape the antics, get arrested for trespassing (or some such crap). I believe the word he used was "tyranny".
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