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DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXAS!!!!


It's what they do!


Just ask Tony Romo!

Texas doesn't like RP...

yawn,,,

Let's face it, he's an opportunist and a loser. His only qualification as a candidate is that he's been... well... a candidate for at least 10 years. How's that look on your resume?

^Actualy, Ron Paul's delegates captured Massachusetts, but they weren't allowed into the RNC. Revealing on multiple levels!

Mitt Romney is the solution to what ails this country.

(just wanted to see if I could type that without cracking up. Get under the Cone.)

The biggest problem with the GOP is they are in 80% agreement about what they DON'T want, but can't agree about what they DO want (except Obama out) as a result, they default to what they didn't want!

And now:

Romney Executes Republican Party Power Grab The Establishment wins a round over the grassroots. “Awful,” says the conservative Blackwell.

TAMPA — The Republican National Convention Rules Committee voted 63-38 to approve a new rule allowing granting the Republican National Committee — and Mitt Romney —sweeping new powers to amend the governing document of the GOP.

The move came at the encouragement of Mitt Romney supporters on the committee, including Romney's top lawyer Ben Ginsberg, who stressed that it would grant "flexibility" to Romney and the committee to adapt to changing political environments. The rule allows the RNC to amend the party's rules without a vote by the full Republican National Convention. And it offers the Republican Establishment a new tool to keep at by Tea Party initiatives that threaten to embarrass or contradict party leadership and stray from a planned message.

Romney, as his party's nominee, exerts significant influence over the RNC, which is made up of elected party officials from all 50 states, while the larger Convention Rules Committee is larger and has a more grassroots membership.

"This is necessary for the world in which we find ourselves in," Ginsberg told the committee, adding that it is "important for the political survival of the party in the electoral context," for the committee to be able to change the rules as it sees fit in the intervening four years between conventions.

Virginia delegate and RNC member Morton Blackwell strenuously objected to the proposed rule change, calling it "the most awful proposed amendments I’ve seen presented to this committee.”

"This is dangerous, it amounts to a power grab," he said. "We are abandoning the historic process by which are rules are adopted."

The Romney allies waited until Friday to propose the amendment, choosing to avoid giving the opposition time to organize by proposing it at the preliminary Rules meeting on Wednesday or during more than three years of RNC Rules Committee discussions.

South Carolina delegate Drew McKissick, who objected to the rule change, echoed Blackwell's charge, warning that nearly any rule could now be amended by 3/4 of the Republican National Committee.

"It’s definitely a power grab by the campaign, the committee," he said. "It’s bad juju. Once you let the genie out of the bottle they can do anything."






Wheel who is DIVIDING the party?

TW is on to it.

Fear of change to spite the election.

Its dumb.

Surprised Wheel doesn't see that. And like you say what happens when the tables are turned?

..TAMPA—With an attention to detail that an art restorer working on a Rembrandt might envy, the Romney team has been working overtime to guarantee a smooth convention without a single discordant note—in 2016. Changes in Republican Party rules proposed by the Mitt-ites would, in theory, lessen the odds of rogue delegates and raucous dissenters disrupting the 2016 second-term coronation for a President Romney.

The small but vocal Ron Paul brigades joined by some militant conservatives threatened a Tuesday afternoon convention floor fight over the new rules, but as a beleaguered minority they never had the votes to get more than a face-saving compromise. Part of the Maine delegation walked out in protest. The history of party rules, dating back to the rise of presidential primaries in 1972, represents a crash course in the law of unintended consequences. So, in truth, there is no guarantee that the details of the Romney Rewrite will end up mattering to anyone other than election lawyers and political scientists.

Whatever its practical effects, this far-sighted effort to revamp the party rules reveals something important about a putative Romney presidency. All first-term presidents govern with a nervous eye on their re-election campaigns. (See Obama, Barack). But Romney appears as worried about his own party's 2016 primaries as he does about the Democrats.

Pat Buchanan has been an oft-discussed figure here in Tampa, since his fire-breathing "culture war" 1992 speech remains a never-again model of a convention speech gone awry. But the real damage to the re-election hopes of President George H.W. Bush came earlier when Buchanan challenged him in the New Hampshire primary and won an impressive 40 percent of the vote. That bygone Buchanan campaign rebuking Bush for going back on his read-my-lips pledge not to raise taxes is the precedent that haunts the Romney forces today.

The specter hanging over Romney is not a particular issue like taxes so much as the rise of Republican factions that demand ideological purity from their leaders. The resurgent right has been on the warpath beginning with the purging of establishment Republican senators like Utah's Bob Bennett (denied renomination in 2010) and Indiana's Richard Lugar (defeated in the 2012 primary). This take-no-prisoners political mood has continued through the recent upset Senate primary victories of tea party candidates like Ted Cruz in Texas and Todd Akin in Missouri.

This would be worrisome for any Republican president, not just one with Romney's zigzag ideological pedigree. No president of any party—certainly not Ronald Reagan or Franklin Roosevelt—has ever governed without muddled compromises and reluctantly broken promises. This backsliding is inevitable (see Guantanamo and Barack Obama) since presidents do not rule by decree.

Against this backdrop, imagine the potential mood in a Romney White House in 2013 or 2015. Every decision would be double-checked to make sure that it doesn't offend any restive faction in the Republican base. All spending proposals would have to pass muster with the tea party movement, all judicial appointments would be informally vetted by social conservatives and all nominees to the Federal Reserve would run the risk of the wrath of Ron Paul.

It can be a demoralizing way to govern. Maybe Vice President Paul Ryan would give Romney enough credibility with the budget hawks to ease the pressure on the administration's right flank. Maybe the Romney political operation would rein in restive Republicans. And maybe leprechauns would dance amid the clover on the White House lawn.

The Pat Buchanan figure in 2016 Republican presidential primaries might be Rand "Son of Ron" Paul on the libertarian side or perhaps (admittedly, a big perhaps) even Sarah Palin representing the tea party movement. There is, of course, no way to know the identity of who might personify thunder on the right in the 2016 primaries. But having survived the turbulence of this year's GOP race (recall the astounding record of underfunded challengers like Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich), Romney knows all too well how uneasy lies the head that wears the Republican crown.

After the 1980 Jimmy-Carter-Ted-Kennedy grudge match, the Democrats have learned the hard way the self-destructive folly of challenging an incumbent president for renomination. Both Bill Clinton and Obama glided through their primaries without a ripple of dissent. But Will Rogers to the contrary, the Democrats these days are the organized political party while the Republicans are continually rambunctious.

The goal of this Tampa convention, more than anything, is to invite undecided voters to feel reassured at the prospect of Mitt Romney in the Oval Office next January. But, as the under-the-radar fight over Republican Party rules illustrates, a President Romney might well find himself a prisoner of his own party's quest for purity. In a sense, that may be the lasting legacy of Pat Buchanan and his quixotic 1992 primary campaign.

..

FRom Yahoo news:

At least three Republican electors say they may not support their party's presidential ticket when the Electoral College meets in December to formally elect the new president, escalating tensions within the GOP and adding a fresh layer of intrigue to the final weeks of the White House race.

The electors — all are supporters of former GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul — told The Associated Press they are exploring options should Mitt Romney win their states. They expressed frustration at how Republican leaders have worked to suppress Paul's conservative movement and his legion of loyal supporters.

"They've never given Ron Paul a fair shot, and I'm disgusted with that. I'd like to show them how disgusted I am," said Melinda Wadsley, an Iowa mother of three who was selected a Republican elector earlier this year. She said she believes Paul is the better choice and noted that the Electoral College was founded with the idea that electors wouldn't just mimic the popular vote.

The defection of multiple electors would be unprecedented in the last 116 years of U.S. politics. And it would raise the remote possibility that the country could even end up with a president and vice president from different parties.

If Romney prevailed in an extremely close presidential election, for example, defections could deprive him of the Electoral College majority needed to secure the presidency. That would throw the presidential election into the U.S. House for the first time in nearly two centuries. The Senate would elect the vice president if neither running mate got a majority of the electoral votes. If Republicans retained control of the House, and with the each state delegation getting a single vote, Romney probably would prevail. But if the Senate remained in Democratic hands, Vice President Joe Biden would be the favorite.

Because so-called faithless electors are rare, the position of elector is largely viewed as symbolic. Each party chooses people to serve as electors in the 50 states, and electors from the winning party convene in each state capital in December to officially select the president and vice president.

As Paul supporters fought for more prestigious delegate slots during state-level conventions this year, they also quietly accrued electors — some in Democratic states likely to be won by President Barack Obama, but also in a handful in states that Romney could take.

In Nevada, for example, Paul's forces seized control of the state convention and won a majority of delegates. They also placed four Paul supporters among the state's six electors.

The electors said they have had no organized discussion over how to cast their electoral votes and there have been no efforts by the campaigns to get them to vote for either Paul or Romney.

Nevada's electors are approaching their duties in different ways.

Jesse Law, an elector and Paul supporter, said he may have qualms with Romney but has always intended to cast his electoral vote for the party nominee.

"I just want to beat Obama," Law said.

But Ken Eastman may not cast his Nevada electoral vote for Romney, if the former Massachusetts governor wins the state. Eastman said he wants to explore options with Republican leaders in Clark County, a group now dominated by Paul supporters.

"I'm undecided at this point," Eastman said, adding that he's "pretty disgusted" with the national Republican Party and how it has worked to suppress Paul's grassroots movement. He said the GOP has not been open to an influx of people with different ideas.

In Texas, elector Billie Zimmerman said she sees Paul as the only candidate able to save the country. She considers Romney and running mate Paul Ryan to be just another couple of Republicans who will disappoint her, and she called the GOP convention a "shocking display of deception and treachery and cheating."

Zimmerman said she hasn't decided how she'll cast her electoral vote.

Along with the three electors looking at alternatives, Nevada GOP elector Ken Searles said he may vote for Paul as a protest, so long as his vote wouldn't change the outcome of the election. Another elector, Kathleen Miller in Alaska, said she is planning to vote for Romney but left open the possibility of a Paul vote if the outcome of the election was certain and Republican leaders continued what she called "shenanigans."

About half the states, including Nevada, have state laws requiring electors to follow the popular vote. Nevada's statute carries no punishment, and it's unclear how it would be enforced. Election officials said they may turn to the courts to enforce the law if an elector strayed.

Tensions between the Republican Party and Paul supporters have been escalating for much of the year. At the Republican National Convention last month, Paul supporters booed as the party adopted new rules to make it more difficult for similar insurgent campaigns to gain traction in the future.

Paul has not endorsed Romney. And his aides did not respond to requests for comment on the possible defection of GOP electors.

The Romney campaign sidestepped questions about the electors, with political director Rich Beeson saying Republicans "are united to defeat President Obama to get our economy back on track and Americans working again."

Often chosen during the convention process, electors are designated by each party to cast votes if their presidential candidate wins the state. A presidential candidate needs 270 of the 538 electoral votes to win.

The last time the House determined the presidential outcome was in 1825, when it selected John Quincy Adams after none of the four candidates won a majority of the electoral votes.

There have been a handful of faithless electors in recent years. In 2004, one Minnesota elector voted for John Edwards for president instead of his top-of-the-ticket running mate John Kerry. Many observers assumed that was simply a mistake. The Minnesota vote was done secretly, and no one ever claimed responsibility.

A District of Columbia elector abstained in 2000 to protest the lack of congressional representation for the district.

The last time multiple electors defected was in 1896, when William Jennings Bryan was the presidential candidate of both the Democratic Party and the People's Party, with both parties choosing different vice presidential picks. Twenty-seven electors in that race chose the People's Party ticket, even though it didn't win the popular vote.

__

Contact Associated Press writer Mike Baker on Facebook: http://on.fb.me/HiPpEV

That's kinda what Romney said to piss these people off.

Huh? It was just published this morning as an update to the "rule changes that alienated some RP supporters" story. I posted it to an old thread as an update because it may remain a story if it embarasses Romney come December (that's in the future if you're chronologically challenged). Sorry I held your eyes open and forced you to read it...oh wait...I didn't.

I just thought it was interesting that it might yet come back to bite Romney in the ass (however small the bite). No agenda, no carrying the water, no trying to convince anyone on a cigar forum to change their vote, just interested.