Thread: Ron Paul on the Issues

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No One But Ron Paul MONEY BOMB! *** February 14th *** <---LINK

Ron Paul Is Secretly Taking Over The GOP — And It's Driving People Insane

Grace Wyler | Feb. 15, 2012, 4:55 PM



By now, it is clear that the Maine caucuses were a complete mess. Evidence is mounting that Mitt Romney's 194-vote victory over Ron Paul was prematurely announced, if not totally wrong. Washington County canceled their caucus on Saturday on account of three inches of snow (hardly a blizzard by Maine standards), and other towns that scheduled their caucuses for this week have been left out of the vote count. Now, it looks like caucuses that did take place before Feb. 11 have also been left out of final tally.

As the full extent of the chaos unfolds, sources close to the Paul campaign tell Business Insider that it is looking increasingly like Romney's team might have a hand in denying Paul votes, noting that Romney has some admirably ruthless operatives on his side and a powerful incentive to avoid a fifth caucus loss this month.

According to the Paul campaign, the Maine Republican Party is severely under-reporting Paul's results — and Romney isn't getting the same treatment. For example, nearly all the towns in Waldo County — a Ron Paul stronghold – held their caucuses on Feb. 4, but the state GOP reported no results for those towns. In Waterville, a college town in Central Maine, results were reported but not included in the party vote count. Paul beat Romney 21-5 there, according to the Kennebec County GOP.

"It's too common," senior advisor Doug Wead told Business Insider. "If it was chaos, we would expect strong Romney counties to be unreported, and that's not what's happening."

The Maine Republican Party won't decide which votes it will count until the executive committee meets next month. But Wead points out that even if Mitt Romney holds on to his slim lead, it will be a Pyrrhic victory.

"He will have disenfranchised all of these people," Wead said. "It could be a costly victory — it is a mistake."

The (alleged) bias against Paul may also be the product of an organic opposition to the libertarian Congressman and his army of ardent fans. Paul volunteers tend to be young and relatively new to party politics, and their presence has many state GOP stalwarts feeling territorial.

"People feel threatened — they don't want to see a bunch of kids who may have voted for Barack Obama take over," Wead said. "They feel a sense of ownership over the party — but there has to be an accommodation."

But state party machinations are already starting to backfire. The Paul campaign believes it has won the majority of Maine's delegates — and the perceived election fraud has galvanized Paul supporters to demand their votes be counted in the state's straw poll 'beauty contest.'

Caucus chaos has also proved to be fertile ground for Paul's quiet takeover of the Republican Party. Since 2008, the campaign and Paul's Campaign for Liberty PAC have made a concerted effort to get Paul sympathists involved in the political process. Now, tumult in state party organizations has allowed these supporters to rise up the ranks.

"We like strong party leadership when it comes from us," Paul campaign chair Jesse Benton told Business Insider. "Our people work very hard to make sure that their voice is heard."

The fruits of this labor are evident in Iowa, where Paul's former state campaign co-chair A.J. Spiker was just elected as the new chairman of the Iowa Republican Party. Spiker replaces Matt Strawn, who stepped down over this year's Iowa caucus dustup.

In Nevada, the state chair has also resigned over caucus disaster, and several Ron Paul supporters are well-positioned to step up to fill the void. These new leaders not only expand Paul's influence at the state level, but also help protect Paul and his hard-won delegates from state party machinations as the delegate-selection process moves to district and state conventions, and eventually the Republican National Convention this summer.

"We are always trying to bring people into the party," Benton said. "I think that is a very positive thing for Republicans. Ron is the person who can build the Republican base, bring new blood into the party. That's how you build the party."
In Maine, the caucus disaster has made the state GOP prime for a Ron Paul takeover. And that means that Paul's hard-won delegates will be protected as the delegate selection process

"We are taking over the party," Wead told BI. "That's the important thing — and that is what we are doing in Maine."

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Ron Paul Is Secretly Taking Over The GOP

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Ron Paul Attracts More Than 1,200 Voters at Tri-Cities Town Hall Meeting

Continues pattern of drawing crowds in triple-digit numbers at Pacific Northwest campaign stops

BELLEVUE, Washington – 2012 Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul attracted more than 1,200 supporters and undecided voters at his latest Washington event, continuing his pattern of drawing triple-digit crowd numbers along the Pacific Northwest campaign tour he began yesterday.
The 12-term Congressman from Texas’ Tri-Cities Town Hall Meeting took place at 12:00 p.m. PST at the Red Lion Richland Hanford House, located at 802 George Washington Way, Richland, WA 99352.

Ron Paul speaks and motions to his wife Carol, to the excitement of event attendees.

Ron Paul Attracts More Than 1,200 Voters at Tri-Cities Town Hall Meeting*|*Ron Paul 2012 Presidential Campaign Committee

Ron Paul Draws More Than 2,000 Voters to Moscow, Idaho—Doubling Expectations

Capacity-crowd of 1,200 attend rally inside University of Idaho Student Union Ballroom, plus hundreds more in overflow areas and outside

BOISE, Idaho – 2012 Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul attracted more than double the number of expected attendees of his large Moscow, Idaho campaign rally held at the University of Idaho.

The Moscow Rally took place at 4:00 p.m. PST at the campus’ Student Union Ballroom, located in Moscow, ID 83884. Campaign officials planned to accommodate 1,000 guests – roughly a room capacity crowd – yet more than 1,000 additional people arrived. At stops along his Pacific Northwest campaign tour, the 12-term Congressman from Texas has made every effort to greet overflow crowds of voters outside speaking venues.

Ron Paul at rightmost of photo begins speaking.

Ron Paul Draws More Than 2,000 Voters to Moscow, Idaho

NeoCons Caught Red-Handed Stealing Maine State Primaries
Saturday, 18 February 2012 02:24 Brad Friedman




This article, originally titled "More On The Maine Republican Party's Stolen 2012 GOP Caucuses - And How It Appears They Did it...", was written by Brad Friedman and originally published at BradBlog.com

It figures. The one time we're on the road and unable to keep up with things on a minute-by-minute basis, a major election would be stolen outright. And there's not a disenfranchising polling place Photo ID restriction in the world that could have done a thing to stop the thieves.

Despite the reputation The BRAD BLOG has gained in some quarters over the years, I don't believe we have ever outright declared an election as "stolen." That has now changed as the Republican Party of Maine has blatantly stolen the 2012 GOP Caucuses in their state for Mitt Romney, as we detailed yesterday.

That fact is just the latest data point in a remarkable and rapidly expanding spate of GOP election fraud by very high profile Republicans across the nation, as we also detailed in yesterday's report.
The question now: Can it be "stolen back"?

Happily, even though we're on the road, the issue is being covered very well this time around by Rachel Maddow at MSNBC. Her coverage last night honed in on a few additional points in this remarkable story, underscoring the blatant theft and breathtaking hypocrisy in the entire embarrassing, if enlightening, affair.

Among the points she expanded on last night (several of which we'd flagged in our coverage yesterday): the call by a Maine county Republican committee for the immediate removal of the shameless and breathtakingly dishonest state GOP Chair Charlie Webster and how the state party leadership not only seems to have lied to voters about results from postponed caucuses to be held this Saturday in Washington County, but how new evidence from Waldo County suggests the party may have simply just made up "results" out of whole cloth --- and then tried to keep those fake numbers a secret from the public in order to award the race to Mitt Romney by 194 votes over Ron Paul.

All of that, remember, before an entire county --- Washington County, one of just 16 in the entire state --- has even managed to hold their caucuses and vote at all in the statewide contest.
This is remarkable stuff and perhaps made more remarkable by the fact that this isn't currently at the top of every news outlet in the nation...

Here's Maddow's full report from last night...



Of particular note in her coverage last night:

• It has never happened before this cycle that a winner has been announced in a Presidential primary or caucus only to see that result later overturned with a different winner announced instead. That happened earlier this year after the Iowa Caucuses --- when that state's GOP chair similarly announced Romney as the winner, even before all vote counts had been reported accurately --- and it may well happen a second time in Maine if the people stand up and fight for the "winner" of the election to be the one who actually received the most, ya know, votes.

• There has been a call for Maine GOP chair Charlie Webster to be fired. The Waldo County Republican Party voted to ask the state GOP committee to formerly "censure" him, after they were unable to get consensus on the call to fire him outright. Remember, Webster, in addition to prematurely announcing Romney the "winner" last Saturday night, before all of Maine's voters had even had a chance to cast their vote, is the hapless clown who, last year, went on a shameless and embarrassing bender in hopes of trying to keep thousands of legal student voters from being able to vote in Maine at all in this year's Presidential elections.

• Washington County was allegedly told the results of their postponed caucuses would be counted in the final results, originally, only to learn last Saturday night, when the state party issued its statement declaring Mitt Romney "the winner" of the 2012 Republican Caucuses in Maine, that the county's "results WILL NOT be factored into" the final certified results of the contest. When the state committee meets on March 10 (several days after Super Tuesday on March 6), in addition to voting to censure Webster as requested by the Waldo County GOP, the committee could also do the right thing and decide to factor in Washington County's results after all.

• The GOP reported zero votes in a number of towns that, in fact, had reported their votes correctly. Is this what the party did across the state? Never mind Washington County, which is set to vote this Saturday, but did Paul already beat Romney even before Washington votes?

A closer look at this last point is in order, as it demonstrates potential malfeasance beyond simply ignoring voters who have yet to cast their votes. It suggests the Maine GOP deliberately falsified the numbers they reported last Saturday.



In our coverage yesterday, we reported on comments posted to a Ron Paul supporter website from Matt McDonald, the chair of the caucus in Waldo County's town of Belfast. He had claimed that when he called the GOP to give the numbers from his caucus (where Paul had won), they told him that their numbers showed Romney winning there instead.

But when he told the woman he spoke to that they had "publicly counted the ballots" at his caucus, "her ears perked up."

The trouble with all of this? When the state GOP posted their official numbers to their website [PDF], the town of Belfast showed ZERO votes for the entire town!

Ethan Andrews picked up on McDonald's comments and added a bit more in his coverage at Waldo VillageSoup [emphasis added]:

Matt McDonald, chairman of the Belfast caucus committee told VillageSoup Feb. 14 that he personally called in Belfast's results to the state GOP office but was told the party already had the figures. When the woman on the phone read those tallies back, McDonald said they showed Romney winning in Belfast, which he knew was not the case.

"I said, 'Ma'am, I know you're very busy but we publicly counted our votes here in Belfast,'" McDonald said, going on to note the discrepancies. ... As soon as she heard we had publicly counted she said, 'Oh, I'll be sure those numbers are changed.'"

When the official results were released, the line for Belfast contained neither the figures the state party official had quoted to McDonald on the phone nor the revised figures but a row of zeroes, suggesting no votes were cast in the city.


So the "publicly counted" votes --- the type of counting that The BRAD BLOG has been advocating for years as Democracy's Gold Standard --- sent a signal to the GOP that they'd have a difficult time gaming the numbers. Instead of reporting the numbers they had for Belfast, however (the ones which claimed Romney won), or the ones from the actual caucus chair (showing Paul had won), they just reported ZERO votes all together.

They appear to have done the same thing in town after town in their own results posted on Saturday night --- the ones which, at the bottom, show Romney having "won" by just 194 votes.
Did the Republican Party simply ZERO out a bunch of Paul town's in order to give the results to Romney?

Andrews offers more details on this point, noting that some 18 towns held caucuses "a week before the announcement," and yet, "In the official Maine GOP tallies...the results from all but one of those communities were given as a series of zeros below the name of each candidate, as though no one had voted."

According to Mike Quatrano, executive director of the Maine Republican Party, and the person who issued the press release, the omission of the Waldo County votes was not a typo. Quatrano did not offer to review the results, but said simply that what appeared on the press release was what was counted by the party.

The GOP leader noted the deadline for local caucus organizers to submit results and chalked up the rows of zeroes after dozens of towns around the state, including 17 of the 18 that participated in the Waldo County event on Feb. 4, to either a lack of participation or a failure by organizers to submit results.

According to Raymond St. Onge, who organized the multi-town Waldo County gathering, neither was the case.

Speaking on Feb. 13, St. Onge said he submitted the results of the Feb. 4 caucuses to the party immediately after the event, which was held a week before the deadline
...
"They had the numbers to count," said St. Onge, referring to state party officials. "Why they didn't include them, I don't know the answer to that."

According to figures supplied by St. Onge, Ron Paul came out the winner among the 18 towns that gathered on Feb. 4 with 43 votes, followed by Rick Santorum with 41.

Mitt Romney, who was declared the statewide winner in Maine by GOP officials, took third place with 35 votes, collectively, among the 18 towns.


REMINDER: This is how elections are stolen --- by folks on the inside, by folks who run the elections and/or have access to the reporting of the supposed results. They are not stolen by imaginary "dead" voters showing up at the polls on Election Day (as folks like Webster and the bulk of Republican officials across the country like to claim.) No polling place Photo ID restriction was required for Republicans casting their votes at Maine's GOP caucuses, neither would such a restriction have stopped Webster from declaring Romney the "winner" of the Maine Caucuses as he did last Saturday night (on both a televised announcement and in the one posted to the Maine Republican Party website.)

Similarly, no Photo ID restriction in the world would have kept Iowa GOP Chair Matthew Strawn from inaccurately declaring Romney the winner on Caucus night there either, as he did, even though Romney had not won that state either. That state's GOP, which similarly determined all of their own rules for the caucuses, also chose not to require Photo ID for their own voters, despite attempting to do so earlier in the year in the state legislature for elections in which Democrats might be able to vote. What does that tell you?

Strawn was forced to resign after his debacle. Maine Republicans should demand same of Webster, and I have little doubt but that they soon will.

If the Paul camp is serious about accountability, they should be filing a lawsuit against both him and the party in Maine as well. So should Republican voters there.

In both Iowa and now Maine, it has been members of the public who have been able to step forward to point out the inaccurate totals reported by the state Republican Parties in each state after they tried to award their races to Romney whether he actually won or not.

That's what Paul supporter Edward True did in Iowa. That's what Belfast's caucus chair Matt McDonald has now done in his town.

In both cases, this was possible because paper ballots were publicly hand-counted. Had those ballots been tabulated by a computer, where results can simply be changed with a few keystrokes, there would have been little evidence of theft for anybody to report on, and the corporate media would have simply moved on and declared a site such as The BRAD BLOG, attempting to oversee the elections and point out disparities and anomalies discovered during our investigation, as little more than a "conspiracy site".

The infamous quote attributed to Josef Stalin is oft-used, but far more frequently ignored. But it has never been more apt: "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything."

And again, we should point out that this news site has never outright declared any election as "stolen"...until now.

The 2012 Republican Caucuses in Maine have been stolen --- by the Republican Party of Maine themselves. Now it's up to the people --- yes, the actual voters and those who support them --- to "steal" it back. Thankfully, since the people are allowed to vote on paper ballots that can be publicly counted, that just may happen.

Think they'll have much of a turnout this Saturday for the previously postponed Washington County caucuses?

NeoCons Caught Red-Handed Stealing Maine State Primaries

(Nobody but) Ron Paul Attracts 2,300 Voters at a Spokane, Washington Campaign Rally

Overflows city’s convention center, continuing a memorable Pacific Northwest campaign tour

BELLEVUE, Washington – 2012 Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul attracted an astonishing 2,300 voters at his Spokane, Washington campaign rally today, ending this day of campaigning in the Pacific Northwest with an uncharacteristically large display of support.The 12-term Congressman from Texas’ rally took place at 7:30 p.m. PST at the Spokane Convention Center. Taken together, Dr. Paul’s Pacific Northwest campaign visit has so far resulted in his having reached thousands of supporters and undecided voters in candidate appearances alone. Tomorrow, Dr. Paul heads to Boise, Idaho for another large rally.

Ron Paul receives a well-earned standing ovation from 2,300 supporters in Spokane.

(Nobody but) Ron Paul Attracts 2,300 Voters at a Spokane, Washington Campaign Rally*|*Ron Paul 2012 Presidential Campaign Committee

Ron Paul Attracts More Than 2,400 Voters to Boise Rally

Ends Pacific Northwest campaign tour in the Gem State with sentiment that Washington and Idaho are fertile ground for strong caucus showing

BOISE, Idaho – 2012 Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul ended his Washington-Idaho campaign tour in the Pacific Northwest’s eastern enclave of Boise, a city that greeted him by turning out over 2,400 supporters to his rally. The 12-term Congressman from Texas’ rally took place at 12:30 p.m. MST at CenturyLink Arena, 233 South Capitol Boulevard, Boise, ID 83702.

Ron Paul surveys 2,400-plus supporters and undecided voters at his Boise rally.
###

Ron Paul Attracts More Than 2,400 Voters to Boise Rally*|*Ron Paul 2012 Presidential Campaign Committee

Ron Paul’s Delegate Advantage

Writes Katrina Trinko at National Review:

If you think Rick Santorum won Iowa, Minnesota, and Colorado, you’re wrong.

Let me explain: Santorum did win the caucus votes in all those states. But because none of those states have bound delegates, that means the state’s delegates to the national convention could theoretically vote for someone besides Santorum for the nomination, someone like say, Ron Paul, whose campaign is aggressively working to control as many state delegates as possible. In Minnesota, where Paul nabbed 27 percent of the caucus vote, the Paul campaign estimates that 75 percent of the current delegates are Paul supporters. In Colorado, where Paul got 12 percent of the vote, 50 percent of the delegates are Paul supporters. Now delegates face elimination rounds, so it’s unclear if the Paul campaign will be successful or not in maintaining these percentages. But the campaign is hoping to pull it off. From my piece today:

The campaign refuses to worry about backlash from the party if its plan succeeds, and Paul’s percentage of delegates at the convention is significantly higher than his percentage of votes.
“We think that’s the way a party should really pick its nominee,” [Paul national campaign chairman Jesse] Benton says. “We think that the activists that are most tuned in to the issues, most engaged in the process should be the ones selecting the nominee.”

It’s true that most states have bound delegates (or at least the vast majority of delegates are bound), so this strategy has limits. But if there is a brokered convention — which is not out of the realm of possibility this cycle — it will matter if most or a significant chunk of delegates are Paul supporters…

Ron Paul's Delegate Advantage*|*Ron Paul 2012 Presidential Campaign Committee