United Liberty

Yesterday, United Liberty Editor Jason Pye did a write-up on Reince Priebus and his recent attempts to reach out to the Ron Paul Republicans/Liberty wing of the GOP. This action has naturally been met with much skepticism from the Freedom forces of the GOP. As a member of that group, I just wanted to expound on a few things:

First off, with all due respect, for those thinking that Priebus did this solely because he was concerned about keeping his position, that just isn’t the case. No one, and I really mean no one (including potential challenger Mark Willis), had any real hope that Priebus would be unseated. Of the 168 members of the RNC, there might have been upwards of two dozen or so that could be counted on to vote against Priebus. However, Mark Willis, the Liberty GOPer from Maine, wasn’t able to get the majority vote of the 3 different state RNC memberships to even be placed on the ballot.

Secondly, Priebus has been reaching out to the Ron Paul/Liberty people before, during, and after this most recent RNC meeting. The writing is on the wall - the Liberty forces have the momentum. And even though they’ve been the ones most involved in the degradation of the GOP for the last decade, the establishment GOP is now exhibiting what might be the strongest and most intense of human instincts - self-preservation.  It’s also just common sense, as evidenced by this recent quote from long-serving, social conservative RNC Iowa Committeeman, Steve Scheffler:

“If you don’t start including new people, you’re going to die on the vine…the old guard needs to be inclusive.”

So today is inauguaration day. For many in this country it is a grand and glorious day, but for many it is a stark reminder of the failures of the GOP establishment and the Romney campaign. If ever there was a presidential election that should have been won by the non-incumbent party, this was it. So what happened?

For starters, a weak candidate who ran a very weak campaign is usually a recipe for disaster. But more than that, I think the biggest failure was the refusal of the GOP establishment to to even tolerate, much less embrace, the liberty wing of the party. You can call this wing the “crazy Ron Paul people” or, as a lady in my county said, “these libertarians trying to take over our party.” This behavior was found at all levels - precinct, county, district, state, and national. A real shame considering that this was the one wing of the party that could have actually GOTV and created some excitement. But the GOP antics in Tampa made sure that wouldn’t happen.

What were they thinking? In such an electric and polarized environment, you’ve got to be inclusive as possible, not completely exclusive. It’s as if many GOPers had a death wish - making all of the wrong decisions at every, single turn. But…that’s all in the past - water under the bridge.

So where do we go from here? That depends on what you believe and what you think is truly helpful to the liberty movement. We all have our opinions on that. A method that I learned from my real estate days is the wall method. Throw it all against the wall and see what sticks, also known as the kitchen sink method.

Last week, United Liberty Editor-in-Chief, Jason Pye, wrote a column discussing why the 22nd Amendment, the one that limits the president to two terms, would never be repealed; despite the fact that there is been a fair amount of press and attention given to the introduction of a resolution by New York Dem, Jose Serrano, that would do precisely that.

Without getting into specifics, Mr. Pye simply said the reasons why this would never happen were “pretty obvious,” and that it was a non-issue. He is correct. And for many of the regular readers of UL, I’m sure it is pretty obvious, but I thought I would take a moment to specifically talk about why it won’t happen for some of the readers who might not fully understand the process.

As many of us know, there are exactly two ways in which the Constitution of the United States can be amended: either by Constitutional Convention, or by a 2/3 vote by Congress with a 3/4 ratification vote by the various state legislatures.

No amendment has ever been passed by a Constitutional Convention, and it seems very unlikely that it would ever happen. In order for it to happen, 2/3 of the state legislatures would have to vote for and call for it. With our polarized electorate, and since many of the states themselves seem so polarized, it just seems like an all-out impossibility.

A lot of the readers of United Liberty probably have a pretty good idea of what transpired at the GOP convention on Tuesday, or at least have heard about it. For those who haven’t, it all started Friday when the Rules Committee, led by one of my least favorite people, John Sununu, decided to radically change the power structure of the party, in essence, neutering the grassroots. Specifically, it would make the RNC  very much a top-heavy organization and give the national party establishment, as well as the party’s nominee, ultimate authority over the delegate process.

So fast-forward to Tuesday when the convention convened to start handling party business. The matter concerning the rule changes was brought before the assembled body and while, according to multiple reports, the nays had it, it was passed. Before we go any further, I’d have to recommend a write-up by Dean Clancy of FreedomWorks. This pretty much gives all the info you need about this power grab. The main points being Rules 12 and 15, respectively, which if changed, would create the aforementioned shift of power.

As Clancy notes, there was a lot of misinformation flying around that helped cause this mess. The main one being that this was just a Ron Paul thing:

It’s been a busy and interesting couple of weeks for the forces of freedom and liberty since my last edition of the Ron Paul Report came out. Sorry about the layoff, but I needed some time to recover from the Georgia GOP convention that occurred a couple of Saturdays ago. As most of you probably already know, things didn’t really work out for us there. But…if you don’t have the numbers—you don’t have the numbers. We were pretty damned close, though. And while it seemed that we definitely had enough to prevent a super-majority, the convention chair, Randy Evans, didn’t see it that way. What they didn’t have to do, though, was rub our noses in it. But that’s cool. Actions have consequences…

With that said, several Ron Paul supporters did make it through as national delegates at the Congressional district conventions back in April. Some have estimated that as many as 10 of the delegates heading to Tampa are Ron Paul supporters, although they will be bound for another candidate for the first two ballots.

There was, however, some very good news from that same weekend. The Paul forces rocked it in Minnesota taking 12 of the 13 available delegate slots and pushed their total number of delegates to 32 out of the allocation of 40 that will be heading to Tampa. Without a doubt, this was the biggest victory for the Paul forces so far in the 2012 delegate process.

Utah also held its state convention a couple of weeks ago. Not surprisingly, the Romney forces swept it. Romney also swept the state of Arkansas.

Again, right off the bat, I am a proud Paul supporter and have made several donations to several of his campaigns and have served as a grassroots coordinator and delegate for the cause—MM

So it was a pretty exciting weekend if you’re a Ron Paul enthusiast. Let’s start with Maine. The Maine GOP held their state convention and basically the Paul forces took it over. The new state Chair, most of the new executive committee, and 20 of the 24 delegates bound for Tampa are Ron Paul supporters.

These delegates are unbound, meaning that they are free to vote for any candidate they support. The Maine caucus that was held earlier this year where Romney narrowly edged out Dr. Paul (with only 87% of the votes counted and with reports of widespread fraud and incompetence) was nothing more than a straw poll. It meant nothing.

The fact of the matter is that Ron Paul has an “air-tight” majority in Maine moving forward. Not that you’ll read or see this in most MSM outlets. In fact, as of a little while ago, most media delegate counts have not been changed except for Google. As a quick aside, I love the Google election results page.

Nevada is basically the same story, albeit a bit different because Nevada’s delegates are bound for the 1st ballot in Tampa; however, Paul has some of those bound delegates coming to him anyways. The kicker is if it goes past one ballot—then those delegates are released and can then vote for the candidate of their choice. 22 of Nevada’s 28 delegates are Paul supporters.