Had Paul not been impeded by the RNC, there would have (A) been a floor fight (derailing the coronation of Romney) and (B) He would have had a 15 minute speech (which could very well have been critical of Romney).
So? Unless I'm missing something, this is still supposed to be a democracy. Dissent is a good thing.
Hold on, hold on. I'm not saying I agree with Romney. Far from it. I'm just saying why the RNC and Romney would want to derail the Paulites before they got anywhere.
The RNC and Romney wanted the convention to be a coronation and a chance to show off Team Romney. They ideally wanted Romney and co to look good, the Republican party to look united, and to get lots of "Romney says X at convention!" news coverage.
Had the Paulites succeeded, that coverage could very well have turned into "Paul gets 15 minute speech, bashes nominee and splits party", "Paul supporters steal the show", or "Floor fight on convention floor throws Romney viability into doubt". Of course, now a lot of that coverage is "RNC beats down opposition within party, breaks own rules", but the media has up until now generally ignored Paul when it wasn't bashing him.
Really, the RNC should have probably given Paul a little speech, been very accommodating, and wooed his supporters by picking up some of the less polarizing policies (For example, his attacks on the Fed and ideas for competing currencies would have been relatively safe as the number of people who would consider it to be a major issue are quite overwhelmingly on Paul's side). At worst they would have mildly annoyed some of the country club Republicans in states they're unlikely to win, and at best they'd get the support of a very useful group without vote splitting.
I'm not attacking McCain (this time). I'm attacking everybody who puts the screws to the black guy for possibly not having been born in the US (turns out he was born in the US), but the old white guy we KNOW FOR A FACT wasn't born in the US gets a complete pass. Ah, hypocrisy in US politics with a garnish of Racism, it's a staple of our diet..
IIRC birthers didn't really exist in significant numbers until well after Obama's election. I think the big "controversy" of the time was either "OBAMA'S A MUSLIM" or "OBAMA'S PRIEST IS NUTS". For all we know, McCain could have had his own birther equivalents had he won the election.
Ron Paul, himself, absolutely intended to be a serious candidate, except the deck was stacked against him from the get go.
Don't get me started. A few weeks before the Iowa caucus, Ron Paul suddenly began to increase in the polls. However, unlike every other candidate, including clowns like Herman Cain and Michelle Bachmann, the media completely ignored it and talked up Gingrich and Romney. About two weeks before the polls opened, he actually came first in several polls, whereupon the media engaged in a gigantic campaign of smear attacks. This lasted for a week and didn't so much as dent his polling, so instead the media picked up an obvious outlier poll and claimed that Santorum was the only alternative to Romney, whereupon Santorum actually began to get support and ended up winning. It was a disgrace of reporting.
Mind, as you said, Paul was partly to blame for being unwilling to ever attack Santorum or Romney, even when it was clear he had to do so to win the caucus. He was willing to attack Gingrich (though Paul and Gingrich have big issues going back to the 90s), and it worked pretty well.
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Topic: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread (Read 1286264 times)