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    Who are the NERD fund donors Mr Snyder?

    Raise the curtain.

    Busses Have Consequences


    By Kevin Rex Heine, Section News
    Posted on Sat Nov 24, 2012 at 03:43:18 PM EST
    Tags: Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, scorched earth tactics, Barry Goldwater, Pat Buchanan, Reagan's Eleventh Commandment (all tags)

    I remember well a certain story told about Chuck Yob and the 1992 Republican National Convention.  During the 1992 Republican Presidential Primary Campaign, Pat Buchanan had finished better than expected in state primaries (frequently a strong second), even though President Bush, sr., had won every single statewide contest.  Nevertheless, Buchanan's campaign wanted to use their "victories" as a reason to exert some influence over the national platform, obtain some delegate seats, and receive a few favorable speaking slots.

    That year, Yob was the chairman of the credentials committee, and during one of their meetings was invited into a side room into a conference with Rich Bond (then the RNC Chairman) and President Bush.  Bay Buchanan, Pat Buchanan's sister and campaign manager, was expected to be making an appearance at the meeting, and the president had some instructions for what he thought needed to be done.

    What Bush wanted Yob to do was to let Buchanan lay out her entire case, put all her cards on the table.  After that, he was to spend the next 5 hours picking apart all of her arguments, and keep her in that room arguing her case for the rest of the afternoon.  And then, at 4 o'clock, he was to give up and let Buchanan have whatever she was still asking for.  She'd take the story back to her people that they'd fought all day with the establishment, and at least got them to give ground on what really mattered.  The story that would go back to the Bush supporters that they'd negotiated all day with the challenger's team, and finally given them their way on some positions that really didn't matter . . . for the good of the party.

    I think that there is a lesson taught here that really should have been applied to the 2012 Republican Presidential Primary Campaign . . . and the 2012 Republican National Convention (especially when viewed in light of the 1964 campaign).


    President Bush knew that he didn't need Pat Buchanan's supporters in order to secure the republican nomination in 1992, but if he was to have any shot at beating Bill Clinton in the general campaign, then he'd need those supporters to be onboard going forward from the convention.  And though I haven't done the analysis to verify it empirically, I think the case can be made that if Ross Perot had just stayed out of the 1992 presidential campaign after he dropped out in mid-July, enough states would have gone to President Bush (that went to Governor Clinton due to Perot siphoning away otherwise-Republican votes) to secure his reelection.  But had Bush insisted on "spiking the football" at the national convention, then I don't think it would have been close enough to even rate the theoretical discussion.

    What gave me cause to even think about both the 1992 and the 1964 presidential campaigns was a post that I saw on a tea party discussion thread that featured the below graphic:

    . . . Which had me thinking, "Wow, really?"  Four states that, collectively, could have converted a Democrat rout to a Republican squeaker - the same four states identified in a post-election Breitbart article - went by margins smaller than the popular support for Ron Paul in those same states' republican presidential primaries.

    Now, to be fair, Ron Paul and his supporters haven't received the kindest treatment here on RightMichigan.  That said, we've also chronicled the multiple occurrences of when either the RNC, or a particular state party, or the Romney campaign itself played fast and loose with the party's own rules, or outright violated them, in order to ensure that the heir-apparent to the nomination received the coronation that he had duly bought and paid for.  (The states of Florida, Nevada, Michigan, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Ohio, Virginia, Louisiana, Colorado, Rhode Island, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, and Iowa come to mind.)  The ultimate moment of infamy came on a scripted rules change vote, recorded here:

    . . . I mean, honestly, wasn't this the same session in which the RNC earlier refused to seat the Maine delegation, because it included apparently too many Ron Paul delegates?  And it wasn't even necessary.  Only Santorum (6 states) and Paul (5 states) had delegate plurality support in enough states to rate a presence on the first convention ballot; Romney's first-ballot support was sufficiently overwhelming no matter what.  Clearly, the establishment elites seemed to so believe that everyone who wasn't a hardcore Democrat would simply line up behind the nominee - because he's our only chance to beat Obama - that they didn't bother to concern themselves with any potential fallout from their "cereal bowl as urinal" treatment of any serious challenger to Mitt-flop's coronation.  And therein lay perhaps their most serious overestimation of grassroots loyalty.

    See, it wasn't just Ron Paul whose campaign was undermined by the establishment kleptocracy.  At various points during the primary process, they also crapped on the campaigns of Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum . . . enough, I'm told, to permanently alienate about ten percent of each campaign's supporters in each and every state.  Clearly, these idiots didn't really think through Reagan's Eleventh Commandment, else they'd have realized that "do no harm" has its limits.  Forcibly tamping down dissent also calls to mind John F. Kennedy's admonition that those who make peaceful takeover impossible will ultimately make a revolt inevitable (and perhaps necessary), which I've been referencing regularly since September of 2010.  Said revolt can take on many forms, including simply sitting out a critical election.

    And that brings us back to that four-state graphic.  How plausible is the theory that Ron Paul support in four states would have been enough to swing the outcome of the 2012 Presidential Election?

    A key assumption of that theory is that Ron Paul's primary supporters universally took one of two protest actions in the general election: either (a) sat out the presidential election, or (b) voted "not republican," likely either via third party or writing in "Ron Paul" (the latter of which I'm told happened in unprecedented numbers nationwide).  Unless you're prepared to interview the 395,040 Ron Paul primary voters in those four states, assuming that you could accurately track them down and that they would answer you honestly if you did, there's no way to actually verify this assumption.  But for argument's sake, let's just go ahead and call it a given.

    The next step, of course, is to verify the general election vote totals for the states in question, as well as Ron Paul's primary vote totals in the same states.  (We have to verify the accuracy of the source information, after all.)  I also expanded the "search" a tad.  Using the Colorado University model that I discussed about six weeks ago as my reference point, I went back and reviewed the totals for each of the seven states that the model projected would go Obama, but by well under five points, as well as the ten states that the model projected to go for Romney, but that went POTUS blue instead.  Necessarily, this included the four states in question.  Where possible, I verified the information with the respective state election authority; where not, I used The Green Papers as source information (and I'm sure that Tony Roza will appreciate the shout-out).  The end result is an overview of how many of a potential 194 electoral votes could have theoretically been flipped into Romney's column by the support of Ron Paul's primary voters.

    As the chart at this link makes clear, the basic theory is plausible for only three states: Florida, New Hampshire, and Ohio; not so much for the remaining fourteen (though Virginia is tantalizingly close), which still leaves Romney 13 electoral votes short.  However, a slightly deeper analysis notes that the combined support of Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Perry (assuming that enough of them took the same protest actions in the general election as the Ron Paul supporters), could have combined with the Paul supporters to flip the outcome in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (and reduce Obama's margin in Iowa to a mere 7,335 votes).  Unfortunately, we're never going to know for sure how much support Gingrich and Perry had in Virginia, because the state party changed the signature verification rules mere weeks before the filing deadline for the Virginia primary.

    Ultimately, of course, we are never going to know empirically how much support the Republican Party alienated in 17 key states, ten of which Romney should have won, all of which he could have won, and at least four of which he needed to win.  The "scorched earth" approach to the primary process, risking alienating critical grassroots support in key states, was but one factor among many that combined to cost the Republican Party big nearly three full weeks ago.

    That having been said, anyone who's at all familiar with Ron Paul's supporters knows that his primary voters tend to also be motivated grassroots volunteers.  And in 17 key states, I'm thinking that a total of about 875,887 motivated neighborhood canvassers would have been really handy.

    So whose bright idea was it to treat them like they didn't matter?


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    I don't think it would have mattered (none / 0) (#1)
    by InksLWC on Sun Nov 25, 2012 at 03:33:22 AM EST
    The thing is, there are a large portion of Ron Paul voters who wouldn't have voted for Romney no matter how much we gave them.  I'm talking about the hard core libertarians who feel very passionately about their beliefs, especially in the foreign policy realm.  I've had some great friends who are Ron Paul supporters, and I don't mind them.  But there are some who are just obnoxious in their views, and they refuse to budge at all.

    As you say, Virginia was probably too close to swing the election, and I don't think 89% of Paul supporters in Ohio would have swung to Romney either.

    But this isn't to say that the overall principle of your argument is wrong.  I think we need to be appealing to libertarians more.  I think we need to be appealing to everyone more.  I've always been a supporter of a big tent party, and if we ignore the libertarian wing of the party, they'll leave.

    When you lie down with dogs... (none / 0) (#2)
    by KG One on Sun Nov 25, 2012 at 09:07:37 AM EST
    Interesting blurb in my e-mail this am.

    The party sycophants who were tripping on each other fawning over this guy leading up to the election expecting a huge payoff, now just can't wait to throw him under the bus.

    It just speaks volumes about party kakistocracy.

    And if you thought that things were bad now, wait until you see what is in the wings?

    Just another example of integrity of party "leaders" can be read by the statements of federal officeholders who are ditching their Taxpayer Protection Pledge.

    Granted, Norquist's Pledge isn't worth the paper it's printed on based on the happenings here in Michigan, but it is an example worth noting of the vacuum of integrity in republican "leadership".

    People are worrying about a "fiscal cliff"?

    I'd be more concerned about conservatives getting tired of having you-know-what dumped on them by people who THINK they know better.

    Asked and answered (none / 0) (#4)
    by Tucker on Sun Nov 25, 2012 at 02:12:51 PM EST
    Asked:

    "That having been said, anyone who's at all familiar with Ron Paul's supporters knows that his primary voters tend to also be motivated grassroots volunteers.
    ...
    So whose bright idea was it to treat them like they didn't matter?"

    and answered:

    "Now, to be fair, Ron Paul and his supporters haven't received the kindest treatment here on RightMichigan."

    Ronulans? LOL .. whatever, dude (none / 0) (#7)
    by Corinthian Scales on Mon Nov 26, 2012 at 05:33:43 PM EST
    For those who don't suffer from CRS, the Ronulans blew it with following their idol in '08 endorsing Cynthia McCommie, and Ralph Nader, instead of calling Ron out on his scorched earth ObamaCare - Democratic Party election gift.  It's the same 'ol Uncle Squeaky history since he threw out his Republican card in '87 only to slither back in from the 1988 election cold 0.47% of the vote pestilent LP wasteland.  Frankly, whatever the 1972 cheap hippie Liberaltarian interlopers believe they impact only evolves back to kicking-back passing a joint around as a priority to heighten their internal debate of abortion being a sensible personal choice on when life actually begins.

    An unfortunate recent turn is I've also taken a strong dislike to Rand, too.  Much like his father sitting around with Barney Frank, and Soros' think tank devising ways to gut our military, Rand has taken it upon himself in the Senate to become Lefty Patrick Leahy's butt-boy with figuring out ways to craft amnesty, and give PaulTards their legal weed to roll in their always on hand abundant supply of pocket constitutions.

    Bottom line.  Ron Paul fellated flip-flop Willard, the deep pocket last standing "anyone but Obama" candidate that authored a plagiarized ObamaCare all throughout the primary while using Leftist propaganda, and smears against all other candidates, and now I see a fluff piece that, if I'm reading this correctly with what it asserts, is quasi in support of the butt-hurt Ronlulans?

    F*ck that.

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