Skousen: Election Manipulation—Nevada GOP Sabotages Ron Paul Delegate Vote

World Affairs Brief, May 2, 2008. Commentary and Insights on a Troubled World.

Copyright Joel Skousen. Partial quotations with attribution permitted. Cite source as Joel Skousen’s World Affairs Brief.

ELECTION MANIPULATION: NEVADA GOP SABOTAGES RON PAUL DELEGATE VOTE

The Republican Party has a real problem with Ron Paul. He just won’t go away quietly. He is still a candidate for President. He hasn’t conceded or dropped out–despite media wishful thinking. Best of all, he refuses to endorse front runner John McCain, the worst warmongering candidate of the entire Republican field. Frankly, Dr. Paul both scares and embarrasses the Republican leadership. They are afraid that if he gets any momentum or significant number of delegates to the convention they will have to let him make a major address on prime time TV and thus more converts. And, Dr. Paul is certainly capable of making converts. He takes all the traditional positions the Republican Party was built upon and that core Republican voters love: small and limited federal government, low regulation, non-aggressive foreign policy, honest money, anti-abortion, and pro-family values. The Republican National Committee wants him to go away so they can get on with the promotion of Sen. John McCain-a totally dishonest and corrupt insider, according to his own son–and continue the hidden globalist agenda which now rules the Party at the highest levels. This week in the Nevada GOP convention, the party leadership shut down the convention when it became obvious that Ron Paul supporters outnumbered those loyal to party leaders who wanted to elect only McCain delegates to the national convention–even though Romney won the primary and Paul came in second, above McCain. It’s as if they are saying, “If we don’t like the results of the vote, we’ll adjourn till we can muster enough of our people to outnumber you!”

Here’s the best account of what happened by C. Bunce of the Daily Paul online newsletter. It is specific enough to show my readers just how evil this really was and who did it [edited for clarity].

“On Saturday April 26th , 2008, in Reno Nevada, the Republican State convention came to order with a set agenda and rigged rules to basically give complete control of the Delegate process to the party. The original rules would have only allowed for a set list of people that could be chosen as a whole to represent the state. This slate was created by a small group of people and were never published, and even as we began the convention were not known.

“This was the first attempt to keep complete control of the delegate selection process. After three hours of [debate], the convention modified the delegate selection process to allow anyone to run for a national delegate position. Three would be chosen from each of the three Congressional District and twenty-two from the entire body by each person voting for twenty-two people.

“It was lunch at that point in time, giving two hours for the next play to be planned. Upon reconvening from lunch at 2:27pm, [the party] wasted no time in unfurling a new plan, which was to not vote for twenty-two people at large (that would take far to much time), but instead vote for only five. Anybody with an eighth grade math understanding would know this was intended to cut our voting by four. This just rejected by the convention getting with a 75% rejection vote.

“At this time we split into three districts and began to vote on delegates, this only took about an hour and went rather smoothly in district three and one. District two was continually delayed because of a dispute of whether a printed ballot was acceptable or a handwritten one… After this we came back and began to debate planks on the floor.

“From our previous count from observers in the rooms of Congressional District’s 1 and 3, Paul Supporters had won all three delegates spots in District 3 and one Paul supporter in District 1. The counts of these districts took about 30 minutes after voting was completed. The 2nd District was taking very long to complete and no one could understand the delay of more then an hour. Information from observers within its count room relayed that Paul supporters had swept its three delegates as well. This meant that Paul Supporters took 7 out of 9 possible Congressional District delegates to the National Convention.

“The person walking from the counting room made a straight line to State Chairwoman Sue Lowden, leaning over and whispering into her ear. After the person walked off Sue sat there for about 30 seconds tapping her foot and then stood up and walked over to Councilman Woodbury who was sitting in front of me, leaning over she said, ‘If we can break Quorum, can we invalidate this?’ After saying this rather loudly and glancing at the expression on my face she quickly quieted down and I was unable to hear the rest of the conversation.

“I figured out what would constitute a quorum in this convention of 1347 delegates–674 delegates. Soon after Chairwoman Lowden left, a John McCain staffer, Paul Johnson, came by. I had been gathering signs and information from him all day, and he believed I was a hardcore McCain supporter… He began his conversation with, ‘They [presumably the Ron Paul supporters] are trying to pull a coup, we are going to leave and quarter the convention.’ I responded, ‘Do we even have the numbers, all they need is a couple hundred to keep Quorum?’ He answered back, ‘The powers that be [NOTE: the insiders know the term and use it] have the numbers, I am just doing what I was told to do by my boss.’ At this moment I knew that they had lost control of the convention and were desperate.

“I watched the party officers directly in front of me huddling up with the parliamentarian and trying to come up with something. Soon after this huddle, the party began to filibuster the convention [purposely taking up time] filling it with videos and speakers over a course of 60 minutes. During this time Sue Lowden began barking at Chairman Bob Beers, and I could clearly see Chairman Beers not agreeing with what she was telling him. First it was just her talking to him, but by the fourth time he stepped off the stage, eight people were surrounding him and pressuring him, which I can only assume was to end the convention, since that is what happened next.

“When he returned to the stage for the last time, Chairman Beers ended the convention illegally calling an indefinite recess without a vote of the delegation to do so, at 6 pm. This was not before their first plan of ending the convention was attempted to be put into play by a member that was not informed calling for a Quorum which we would still have had. But Beers interrupted him saying, ‘I will save you some time’, and called the indefinite recess. Later it was claimed to be the end of the contract of the room. But upon request from the Hotel they gladly gave us three more hours for free.

“After five seconds of pure silence, disbelief, and confusion, a once consistently civil and controlled convention was thrown into ten minutes of anarchy, while the party [leaders] vacated the room out the back doors. Bob Bears attempted to speak with an angry mob with little to no avail before leaving. After this occurred we attempted to reconvene the meeting but fell 70 people short of a quorum.” Too bad.

What was done in Nevada is merely a prelude to what will happen at the national convention in Minneapolis MN on September 1-4. National GOP leaders will attempt to marginalize Dr. Paul since he “can’t win.” They may even try to avoid a vote and proclaim McCain the candidate by acclamation. That means dedicating the entire convention to McCain and his potential Vice Presidents ignoring Paul’s challenge. I spoke with Ron about the convention and he feels confident they will treat him fairly. He says the GOP national chairman Mike Duncan was very friendly to him on the phone. I think that’s all a ploy to disarm the good doctor. I think we will see Dr. Paul completely sidelined at the convention. Even the RNC website speaks only about building the team necessary to see John McCain elected president. They act as if there will be no contest at the convention.

In light of these developments, not at all unexpected, I’m going to recommend that all Ron Paul supporters continue to seek to become delegates to the GOP convention and to be prepared to embarrass the party if it continues to deny Dr. Paul a voice. That said, we must also be prepared to fight on under a third party banner after the Republicans reject Dr. Paul. Under no circumstances should constitutional conservatives vote for John McCain as the “lesser of two evils.” There is no such thing anymore among the major party candidates.