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Ron Paul supporters placing final hopes on Nebraska convention

Ron Paul supporters placing final hopes on Nebraska convention

By Morgan Little

July 12, 2012, 3:05 a.m.

Ron Paul’s presidential campaign is not done yet. This weekend, two months after the Texas congressman effectively ended his drive for the White House, his supporters will try to win a plurality of Nebraska’s convention delegates. If they succeed, Paul’s backers will have control over five state delegations, a marker that would allow him to be officially nominated for the presidency, and granted 15 minutes to address the party at the national convention next month in Tampa.

Mitt Romney won the state’s primary in May with 71% of the vote; Paul was third, behind Rick Santorum, with 10%. But the primary was non-binding, meaning the results have no bearing on the make-up of the state’s 32-member delegation.

Paul supporters have achieved similar delegate victories in Iowa, Louisiana, Maine and Minnesota

The 32 bound delegates selected Saturday will join three unbound delegates appointed because of their positions as the state Republican party chair, national chairwoman and chairman. Paul has not sanctioned a disruptive approach to the Tampa session, and his campaign declined to comment on its supporters’ plans for the weekend.

Anticipating a heated convention, Nebraska Republican Party Chairman Mark Fahelson and Republican Liberty Caucus chair Laura Ebke issued a joint statement Monday asking participants to adhere to the “Nebraska Way.”

“It’s honesty. Being cordial and neighborly. Practicing the Golden Rule. And, when differences occur, shaking hands and agreeing to disagree in a respectful way,” the statement said.

Both pledged they wouldn’t encourage “dilatory or disruptive tactics.” The statement also announced the Nebraska Republican Party would rescind a plan to increase its security presence during the convention.

Regardless of the outcome in Nebraska, Paul will have a presence in Tampa one day before the convention opens, during an event at the University of Florida’s Sun Dome. Various Libertarian organizations will hold additional, separate rallies.

It's D-Day for Ron Paul's 2012 Insurgency

It's D-Day for Ron Paul's 2012 Insurgency

By Chris Good | ABC OTUS News

Today will mark the end, or the ultimate success, of Ron Paul's delegate insurgency.

After a primary campaign in which Paul's team focused on the most ignored parts of the GOP process, winning delegates in overlooked caucus states and organizing around delegate votes at state conventions, Paul supporters will have their last chance today to ensure an official presence for Paul at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla.

The Nebraska GOP convention - the last in which delegates will be up for grabs - will offer a long shot at putting Paul over a critical threshold.

Paul is on the cusp of winning enough support to secure a 15-minute speaking slot and to have his name placed on the ballot of official candidates for the nomination at the Republican National Convention in August.

Mainstream Republicans would blanch at such a prospect, given that Paul's views on the Federal Reserve, currency, foreign policy and America's global military presence run antithetical to Republican orthodoxy. Republican Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman, a supporter of Mitt Romney, has been making phone calls and organizing delegate support for Romney to block Paul's supporters at the state convention.

If Paul can demonstrate the support of a plurality of delegates from five states, Republican National Committee bylaws require he be allowed to speak in Tampa. Paul has enough delegates from Iowa, Minnesota and Maine, and Louisiana's still-disputed delegation could put him over the five-state mark, if his supporters prevail in Nebraska.

Paul backers will face long odds in Nebraska, where the convention's voting attendees were selected in early June at county conventions. Attendees of those events had to register by March 1, meaning that Saturday's outcome reflects a months-long organizing push by libertarian supporters of Paul.

"We have a rough count" of state-convention delegates and whom they support, said Laura Ebke, who leads the Nebraska chapter of the Republican Liberty Caucus and who is the chief organizer of Ron Paul supporters in the state. "We don't have a majority. We have a significant minority."

Saturday's results will depend on who shows up. The convention provides for 400 voting delegates, but state party Executive Director Jordan McGrain said he does not expect all to attend. More than two thirds will likely show up, he said.

Paul, who has stopped campaigning in new states, is not personally organizing around the Nebraska convention, Ebke said. According to Ebke and McGrain, neither Paul nor Romney have staff in the state working on this event.

The Republican candidate and libertarian hero will have a presence in Tampa, Fla., regardless of what happens in Nebraska. His campaign is planning a rally, and supporters have planned a festival, to coincide with Tampa's preparations for the Republican National Convention.

But unless Paul meets the RNC requirements as a candidate for the nomination, he has no guarantee of an official presence inside the Tampa Bay Times Forum. He'll be at the mercy of convention organizers and presumptive nominee Mitt Romney to grant him speaking time, entrance to the event and visibility as a participant.

In 2008, Paul was shut out of the Republican convention in Minnesota. As delegates rallied around the ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin in the Staples Center, Ron Paul held his own event across town.

Paul's status has risen since then, as he outdid his 2008 vote totals in key states along the way in 2012, but his views still make him a pariah to some. It's been suggested, most prominently in a column by Republican tax maven Grover Norquist, that Romney would be wise to seek a reconciliation with Paul in an attempt to bring his supporters into the fold.

Paul's campaign expects to bring as many as 500 supportive delegates to Tampa, out of 2,286 total, meaning his floor presence could be noticeable with or without the assent of Romney and the convention's organizers. But unless his backers can overcome long odds in Nebraska, Paul is guaranteed nothing from those putting on the event.

Ron Paul loses his last presidential bid in Nebraska

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Ron Paul loses virtually his last presidential bid in Nebraska

By Morgan Little

July 15, 2012, 1:16 p.m.

Ron Paul’s bid for the presidency has all but officially ended, with supporters failing to rally a plurality of Nebraska’s Republican delegates in a last-ditch effort to ensure that Paul would be nominated as the party’s candidate at the GOP convention next month.

Mitt Romney, now the GOP’s unchallenged candidate for president, won all but two of the state’s 35 delegates, ensuring Paul wouldn’t be nominated at the Republican National Convention in August and preventing the chance of a raucous split convention between Romney and Paul supporters.

The Nebraska convention went smoothly despite earlier fears that the proceedings could become unruly, to the extent that the state GOP and Paul supporters released a statement promising to keep things cordial.

“We did it the Nebraska way. In Nebraska, we can have our disagreements but, at the end of the day, we work together,” Mark Fahleson, Nebraska’s GOP chairman told the Omaha World-Herald.

Romney holds strong ties to Nebraska’s Republican party, with Gov. Dave Heineman being the first governor to endorse his campaign, and a victory in the state’s primary in May.

Paul finished third during that primary, behind Rick Santorum, with 10% of the vote. But delegates were nonbinding until Saturday’s convention, leaving the opportunity open for Paul supporters to seize a plurality of their support, as they had in Iowa, Louisiana, Maine and Minnesota.

Had they been successful, Paul would have taken five state primaries, and per Republican National Committee rules, would have been placed as a nominee for the party candidacy and allotted 15 minutes to address the convention.

Instead, Paul’s presence at the national convention will probably be limited to a rally his campaign is holding a day prior to the main event, which will be joined by two separate rallies held by supporters of Paul’s libertarian causes.

Conservative radio host Jack Hunter, on Paul’s campaign site, dismissed claims that Nebraska represented the final chance for Paul’s presidential ambitions.

“They may be accurate in the immediate technical electoral sense, but are wholly inaccurate in the much more pertinent and larger sense when reporting on anything concerning Ron Paul and his very large, vocal and influential movement,” he said.

Ron Paul’s ‘Audit the Fed’ bill passes the House

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Ron Paul’s ‘Audit the Fed’ bill passes the House

By Chris Moody, Yahoo! News | The Ticket

At long last, Ron Paul has his day.

The House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved the Texas Republican's bill to increase the transparency of the Federal Reserve. With bipartisan support, the measure passed 327-98. One Republican, Rep. Bob Turner of New York, joined 97 Democrats in voting against it.

For Paul, the journey to getting his bill approved in the House has been a long, and often lonely one. He first introduced the bill to a skeptical House a decade ago. While his efforts were ignored at the time, the call to "audit the Fed" has gained support from mainstream Republicans and Democrats.

On the presidential campaign trail in 2008, Paul spoke often about the need to make more of the Federal Reserve's activities public, a cause that became a rallying cry of his supporters. Paul's book "End the Fed" was published in September 2009, and he continued his crusade against the federal bank into his second run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. (Paul first ran for president as the Libertarian Party candidate in 1988.)

Paul's bill came to the floor Wednesday with 270 co-sponsors. The measure also received support from his fellow Republican presidential candidates during the primaries. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, most recently voiced his approval for Paul's efforts last week.

"Ron Paul's 'Audit The Fed' bill is a reminder of his tireless efforts to promote sound money and a more transparent Federal Reserve," Romney posted on Twitter.

The bill, of course, is not without critics. Democrats say the Act could "politicize" the Federal Reserve's decisions—what Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has called a "nightmare scenario."

"This bill would ... jeopardize the Fed's independence by subjecting its decisions on interest rates and monetary policy to GAO audit," said House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, a Democrat from Maryland. "I agree with Chairman Bernanke that congressional review of the Fed's monetary policy decisions would be a 'nightmare scenario,' especially judging by the track record of this Congress when it comes to governing effectively." [How on earth can auditing and documenting what the folks at the Federal Reserve currently do secretly cause a 'nightmare scenario']

While Wednesday's passage in the lower chamber is a victory for Paul and his supporters, the bill is considered dead on arrival in the Senate. Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader and a Nevada Democrat, has vowed not to put it to a vote.

Ron Paul's aura leaves GOP, Romney in tricky spot

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Ron Paul's aura leaves GOP, Romney in tricky spot

Aug. 24, 2012 12:29 PM

Associated Press

TAMPA, Fla. -- Mitt Romney loyalists, seeking a show of strength and solidarity at next week's GOP convention, struggled Friday to placate restless Ron Paul supporters while also weakening the powers of such insurgent candidates in future Republican primaries.

Pre-convention haggling annoyed devoted backers of Paul, the 77-year-old Texas congressman who was among Romney's primary challengers. One Republican National Convention panel voted to replace 10 delegates from Maine who are supportive of Paul, deciding that they came to Tampa through a flawed state selection process. A second pro-Romney committee moved to adopt a rule narrowing the routes for delegates to national conventions in 2016 and beyond.

"It sends the message that when the establishment doesn't get the outcome they want they will use the process to change it," said Mike Rothfeld of Virginia, who tried in vain to block the ouster of Maine's delegates partial to Paul. "It will not be good for the party. It will not be good for Mitt Romney."

Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, comfortably has more delegates than needed to win the nomination. His bid to unseat Democratic President Barack Obama is on course to be tight in November, leaving little room for error.

The skirmishes with Paul supporters highlight lingering tensions between wings of the party ahead of a convention geared around unity. In a peace offering, Romney's campaign announced plans to air a video tribute to the libertarian-leaning Paul during the convention.

Paul didn't win a single presidential primary, yet he was able to amass 177 delegates, according to the Associate Press tally. That's due to an intense effort, particularly in caucus states, to swarm state conventions that took place after the primary elections. His followers won a majority of delegate slots in Iowa, Maine, Minnesota and Nevada.

But the Maine delegation underwent a makeover on the convention's eve. After several hours of discussion, the credentials committee voted overwhelmingly to substitute 10 Paul delegates with 10 aligned with Romney.

William McGinley, a lawyer pressing the case for the delegate swap, said the Maine convention was invalid because it was riddled with problems. Some party officials complained of lax floor security and dubious identification of participants.

McGinley said Paul's supporters "shouldn't be able to benefit from this chaos."

Paul's allies said it was Romney's team that threw up obstacles back in May.

Committee members who backed the substitutions said it was a stand against unruly conventions even if it cost some people access to a convention they spent thousands of dollars to attend.

"This body has to send a message back for future conventions," said Bob Brunjes of Washington state.

The move had immediate repercussions. Maine Gov. Paul LePage, a delegate himself, said he would skip the convention because of the discord. Another remaining delegate, former state lawmaker Stavros Mendros, predicted it would hamper the GOP's bid to snatch an electoral vote in Maine given its process of awarding those based on geographic vote totals.

"It's going to be a disaster back home," Mendros said. "People are going to be out for blood."

In an adjoining ballroom, allies of Romney worked to make it harder for insurgent presidential candidates such as Paul to have a big voice in future nominating conventions. GOP rule-makers voted to tie the selection of convention delegates to the results of each state's Republican primary. Supporters of the rule change said primary voters expect national convention delegates to be loyal to the primary winner.

The proposed change is subject to a later vote on a large rules package.

The flare-ups put a damper on the Romney team's other efforts recently team to make Paul followers feel included in key decisions.

For instance, the platform committee Tuesday adopted a draft document that includes several planks backed by Paul delegates, including proposals to audit the Federal Reserve and seek a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

Advisers to Paul said he was not looking to cause a scene in Tampa.

Paul was not expected to address the convention though he had plans to headline a rally Sunday at a Tampa college football stadium. Paul's son, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, scored a prime-time convention speaking slot next week. Rand Paul is seen as an heir to his father's political machine.

Despite his sharp disagreements with Paul on foreign policy and other issues, Romney never engaged in the often sharp back-and-forth during the nominating campaign that he did with former rivals Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum.

Senior Romney aide Russ Schriefer, who has overseen the convention plans, said the film that will air Tuesday night is a nod to Romney's respect for Paul.

"Governor Romney and Congressman Paul, while they certainly disagree on many issues, they always have had, if you've watched part of the debate this year, a lot of mutual respect between the two of them," Romney adviser Russ Schriefer told reporters Friday.

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Associated Press writers Glenn Adams in Augusta, Maine, Stephen Ohlemacher in Washington and Charles Babington and Thomas Beaumont in Tampa contributed.

Ron Paul says Republican Party is not my party

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Ron Paul says Republican Party is not my party

By ALEX YAP

Hearst Washington Bureau

Last week, Mitt Romney wowed conservatives at the Republican National Convention, but one Texas representative remains unimpressed.

Former presidential candidate Ron Paul, who was described by the master of ceremonies at his Tampa campaign rally last Sunday as a “clean boat in a sea of garbage,” still has not endorsed the Republican presidential candidate.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Paul even went so far as to say the Republican Party was not his party — and is, in many ways, irrelevant.

“I do not like politics at all. I think both parties are Keynesian economists, and support positions that I do not like,” said Paul.

Paul, who was a distant runner-up for the Republican nomination, called the former Massachusetts governor”s acceptance speech “upbeat,” “pro-American,” and acknowledged that the audience was won over, but said that he remains “very, very skeptical of hearing anything that will change the course of history.”

He even lambasted the GOP’s guest speaker Clint Eastwood for implying that Romney and his supporters were unhappy with current policies, but for failing to suggest any changes.

Paul said he thinks the current economic crisis is much worse than the one we faced in 2008, but that debt is a problem no one is willing to face and one that Romney and friends failed to address during the convention.

“Hopefully [Romney] is right and he’s going to create all these jobs, but quite frankly, only the market creates jobs. Governments can’t and presidents don’t do it,” Paul said.

Ron Paul calls for 'love,' 'free market economics' in final address

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Ron Paul calls for 'love,' 'free market economics' in final address

By Morgan Little

November 15, 2012, 10:18 a.m.

Libertarian icon and three-time presidential hopeful Ron Paul delivered his final address on the House floor Wednesday, admitting that while he sees little progress in favor of his defined cause of freedom, he sees a chance the tide can turn as he steps away from Congress.

Paul, a Republican who leans heavily toward libertarianism and has served Texas’ 22nd District intermittently since 1976, admitted that “according to conventional wisdom,” his tenure on Capitol Hill has “accomplished very little.”

“No named legislation, no named federal buildings or highways – thank goodness. In spite of my efforts, the government has grown exponentially, taxes remain excessive and the prolific increase of incomprehensible regulations continues,” Paul said. “Wars are constant and pursued without congressional declaration, deficits rise to the sky, poverty is rampant and dependency on the federal government is now worse than any time in our history.”

Paul painted a portrait of a country with “no loot left to divvy up,” approaching a fiscal cliff “much bigger” than the one looming Jan. 1 and impending authoritarianism. Doom accompanied gloom in spades, with Paul’s frustration with his inability to stem what he sees as the constriction of freedom evident as he spoke.

It’s rare to find a member of Congress speaking from the floor and condemning the nation’s trajectory over the last century, accusing the populace of becoming beguiled by “endless” wealth, but there Paul was.

“As long as most people believed the material abundance would last forever, worrying about protecting a competitive productive economy and individual liberty seemed unnecessary,” he said.

The only solution Paul sees, as he makes a transition from lawmaker to figurehead, is “an intellectual awakening,” one that hearkens back to the founders’ views on civil liberties and eschews what Paul sees as the collusion between Democrats and Republicans.

“Everyone claims support for freedom. But too often it’s for one’s own freedom and not for others. Too many believe that there must be limits to freedom,” Paul said. “They argue that freedom must be directed and managed to achieve fairness and equality, thus making it acceptable to curtail, through force, certain liberties.”

“The best chance for achieving peace and prosperity, for the maximum number of people worldwide, is to pursue the cause of liberty,” he concluded.

Paul’s speech was met with some applause, but was ultimately overshadowed by President Obama’s post-election news conference, which was already halfway over, and relegated to C-SPAN’s online streams. Which, ultimately, seems appropriate for a man whose underdog status has drawn increasingly large numbers to his cause, and whose supporters frequently clash with the Republican Party establishment.

In the end, perhaps nothing better summarizes Paul than a plea he made toward the end of his speech, in which he asked the nation to forego envy, greed and intolerance and supplant them with “love, compassion, tolerance and free-market economics.”

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