Remember when the Maine GOP pulled all those shenanigans to make sure Romney beat Ron Paul in their caucuses? Turns out that Ron Paul had the last laugh. He also piledrived Romney in Nevada this weekend:
Augusta, Maine, Paul supporter Brent Tweed narrowly won the election to chair the state’s GOP convention. From there, he presided over a meeting that ended up with Paul winning 18 of the state’s 24 delegates to Tampa.
Romney narrowly won Maine’s caucus straw poll earlier this year. But that was a nonbinding beauty contest. Sunday’s vote was what really counted.
In Sparks, Nev., the result was even more one-sided. Paul supporters won 22 of 25 delegates up for selection. But Nevada’s caucuses, unlike Maine’s, were binding on delegates. Some delegates were also awarded on an at-large basis. The bottom line: In the first round of voting in Tampa, 20 Nevada delegates are bound to Romney, and eight are free to vote for Paul, no matter their personal preference.
The article goes on to discuss a possible strategy for the bound Romney Paul delegates at the convention. They can apparently abstain without violating the rules. So, on the crucial first ballot, Romney can only count on 9 delegates from Maine and Nevada combined, while Paul is assured of eighteen.
I have two thoughts on this. First, it just highlights what a sad joke it is to think about our nominating contests as elections. They’re not elections. If you want to be the nominee, it helps a lot to win the elections that take place, but don’t ever think that your vote is going to count. Figure out what the rules are in your state and make sure your candidate gets your support when it matters.
Second, how incompetent is Mitt Romney? While the president is out chasing down the terrorists who blew up the USS Cole twelve years ago and disrupting terrorist plots and putting General Motors on the Forbes Top 5, Romney is losing fistfuls of delegates to a guy he tried to cheat out of those very same delegates three months ago. I thought the one thing Romney was good at was taking people’s shit away from them, and here he is getting his pockets picked by a near-octogenerian.
In the end, Ron Paul can’t do anything to prevent Romney from being the nominee, but he can make him look stupid. Oh wait! He already did.
