Ron Paul's Ninja Delegates

[Bacon King]

Against my better judgement, I've been looking through the official Ron Paul 2012 forums to get a better sense of what exactly the selection of county delegates was last night. I became interested after hearing NPR interview several people in Minnesota, who each essentially said, "Yeah, Santorum won my precinct in a landslide, but I got picked as a delegate and I'm a Ron Paul supporter!" It appears, from sporadic anecdotal evidence anyway, that this pattern of Ron Paul winning state delegates out of thin air is incredibly widespread.

Some select quotations from the Ron Paul forums:

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And these are just from the threads about Colorado; there a lot more examples listed, and plenty of stuff from Minnesota- and references to similar stuff happening in Iowa as well. Are these exaggerated accounts of atypical caucus experiences, or has every caucus so far really been a stealth Ron Paul landslide?

[Bacon King]

Aren't yesterday's things non-binding?

Anyways, the whole ninja delegates thing would be hilarious.  Can delegates change their commitment, anyways?

Yes, the straw polls that took place in MN and CO meant absolutely nothing, essentially. The only thing that matters is the candidate preference of the delegates selected from each caucus. And what we're seeing is many precincts where Paul got <20% still picking a nearly complete slate of delegates that support Paul, indicating that the straw poll results significantly underestimate Ron Paul's eventual RNC delegate haul from the state. These state delegates can change their commitment, yeah; it's all nonbinding. However, these are serious Paul supporters we're talking about, it's not like they find anyone else bearable enough to vote for anyway.

[Bacon King]

When exactly are the conventions to decide the national delegates? Because if they're in April or May, that's awesome. But if they're in June or something, then there'll probably be a nominee already and it won't matter.

Congressional district conventions, which appoint RNC delegates for their districts, seem to generally be in mid-April. State conventions that appoint the statewide delegates are in May or June.

[Bacon King]

In somewhat related news, after examing the Ron Paul forums, I can now introduce to you all the stupidest meme in all of the internet:

[Bacon King]

Indeed, BRTD, these are some creepy people we're talking about.

In addition, even delegates that are binding can change their mind at the GOP convention if it goes beyond the first vote.  There have been stories of Ron Paul supporters undercover as supporters of other candidates so that if the convention becomes deadlocked, they'll be able to vote for Paul. 

Just to clarify on this point; what I'm referring to in this thread are the delegates to the state party conventions and such. The "stealth delegates" you're referring to are RNC delegates, to the national convention. But yes, they are indeed real.

So, brokered convention?
disgonbegood.gif

[Bacon King]

What happened in Nevada in 2008?

http://www.lvrj.com/news/18312799.html

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[Bacon King]

Forum Paultards: have any of you seen any actual Iowa precinct reports regarding county delegate selection? I've seen Paul campaign stuff saying they have the delegates to control the caucuses of "all the small counties" as well as some people claiming "statewide, 70% of county delegates are Paul supporters," but I haven't found any concrete or even anecdotal evidence to support these assertions.     

[Bacon King]

Forum Paultards: have any of you seen any actual Iowa precinct reports regarding county delegate selection? I've seen Paul campaign stuff saying they have the delegates to control the caucuses of "all the small counties" as well as some people claiming "statewide, 70% of county delegates are Paul supporters," but I haven't found any concrete or even anecdotal evidence to support these assertions.     

Bacontard: All you can get is hearsay from people that have been to these caucuses.  I'm optimistic, but it's a what and see for the upcoming county/state level conventions - however they do it in Iowa (I'm thinking Minnesota, since I've been in that process.)

Indeed, the only thing that's out there is hearsay, of course, but I'd at least like to see some precinct reports for Iowa like the ones from Colorado in the OP. I can't even find even a single shred anecdotal evidence to support the Paul people's claims about Iowa county delegates. In fact, the single example I've been able to was someone mentioning that Ron Paul won the precinct, but Santorum voters were picked to go to the county convention.

The abysmal turnout may play a role in all of this; if the number of delegates to the county/BPOU convention is of the same order of magnitude as the number of people who show up to the caucus in the first place, of course the more committed people (regardless of candidate support) are more likely to get selected as delegates.  This is more true of CO/MN than Iowa, of course.

As usual, my line is to simply ignore these reports until we get any solid press from the next round of conventions.

If Paul should manage to pull this off, though, it is only in 7 states: IA/CO/MN/ME/WA/MO/NE.  Of course, that is a maximum of 237 delegates at stake, plus whatever pittance he wins in other states.  Of course, that's over 10% of the delegates, which isn't an insignificant amount.

I certainly agree with you regarding Iowa: the caucuses are much more of a tradition there, so more Republicans are willing to participate and it's thus much less likely for Ron Paul's supporters to "abuse" the system there. That, coupled with the fact that I haven't been able to find any on-the-ground reports from Iowa, make me doubt that they pulled a coup there on the scale that they (may have) accomplished in Colorado or Minnesota.

And of course these delegates certainly wouldn't hand Ron Paul the nomination, but it might be enough to make the difference for a brokered convention (and regardless, as King pointed out, having a bunch of devout Paulites in the RNC audience would still be incredibly amusing).

And if there is a brokered convention, then another sort of Ninja Delegates come into play: those who enter the RNC pledged to another candidate, but who will switch their support to Ron Paul if the convention has a second/third ballot. Many states with primaries appoint their delegates similar to the way caucus states do, only that they're pledged to support the state's primary winner on the first (sometimes also the second) ballot. I'd love to look into this as well, and see how widespread this "undercover Paul delegate" practice is.

Forum Paultards: have any of you seen any actual Iowa precinct reports regarding county delegate selection? I've seen Paul campaign stuff saying they have the delegates to control the caucuses of "all the small counties" as well as some people claiming "statewide, 70% of county delegates are Paul supporters," but I haven't found any concrete or even anecdotal evidence to support these assertions.     

Bacontard: All you can get is hearsay from people that have been to these caucuses.  I'm optimistic, but it's a what and see for the upcoming county/state level conventions - however they do it in Iowa (I'm thinking Minnesota, since I've been in that process.)

What's a Bacontard? Someone who fanatically supports bacon?

If so, sign me up immediately.

Aye, in fact, I think I will change my profile stuff in support.

Now, I shall go lurk Ron Paul forums once more to see if I can find any more details on all of this.

[Bacon King]

It's looking very possible that Ron Paul seriously overperformed with delegates in Nevada as well; the eventual RNC delegates selected are bound by the strawpoll result, of course, but that doesn't mean there won't be lots of fun at the state convention again!

Some examples:

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[Bacon King]

Bumping this because there's a lot of news out of county conventions in several states today, and I don't want to clog up the Nevada thread.

First, let me repost everything from the other thread:

Minnesota Senate District 8, which voted ~50% Santorum and ~20 Paul:

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Iowa:

More Ninja Delegate reports; these are all from Iowa:

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News from the Iowa County Conventions, unfortunately from a Ron Paul blog, but still!

Harrison County: 7 delegates for Paul, 3 for Santorum, 3 for Romney, 1 for Gingrich. Santorum won the caucus straw poll in January with 31%. link

Harrison County's caucus results: 16.92% Paul
Harrison County's delegates to district and state conventions: 50% Paul

The ninja delegates strike!!!

[Bacon King]

I'm also reading a lot of stuff from Ron Paul supporters in Georgia, where the delegates are selected through a county/district/state convention process but pledged as per the state's rules. There seems to be an active effort here to select Ron Paul "shadow delegates" in Georgia who enter the convention pledged to Gingrich:

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For the record, these delegates (presumably, almost all Gingrich delegates) are pledged until after the second ballot, until the candidate gets less than a third of the vote at the RNC, or until the candidate withdraws himself from consideration, whichever comes first. Of course, this is assuming Gingrich stays in until the convention anyway, or that the Paultards don't just ignore the pledged delegate rules (there's some talk that they might, apparently).

[Bacon King]

So if Gingrich drops out before the convention, Ron Paul potentially gets some Georgia delegates?

Indeed!

[Bacon King]

Are these all just reports from Paul-ites themselves though?  Do we have any independent confirmation on this stuff?

This is all anecdotal, of course, but Ron Paul's supporters are literally the only place on the internet to find reports of these sorts of things.

[Bacon King]

I found this Washington Times article about the Paulista invasion of Georgia's County GOP meetings; apparently they successfully managed to hijack Dekalb County, and were only narrowly rebuffed in Cobb County by parliamentary shenanigans from the chair.

Here's a link to one Paultard's take on what happened in Cobb County:

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lol

[Bacon King]

I salute these awesome Freedom Fighters.

Anyone got more reports from Minnesota?

Found some more for you, BRTD!

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[Bacon King]

Any word on the counties and districts these were in? I wonder if Paul is taking all delegates from my district after all.

The unanimous Paul slates all appear to be from the Twin Cities area; the rest are randomly scattered in areas that voted for Santorum.

[Bacon King]

Reposting this from another thread because it illustrates the possible ramifications if these ninja delegates really do all succeed completely:

Let's assume a best case scenario for Ron Paul, where his supporters manage to hijack the state conventions of IA, MN, ME, WA, and CO and get unanimous Ron Paul delegates selected, and also manage to get a majority in Nevada, rewrite the delegate rules so they can send a unanimous Paul slate, and don't get penalized for it by the RNC. Almost certainly won't be this big of a shift from the estimated totals; remember this is a best case scenario estimate.

Romney: 388
Paul: 209
Santorum: 141
Gingrich: 82

[Bacon King]

More updates!

• Ron Paul's supporters appear to be making a mess of things in the run up to Wyoming's state convention as well; this convention picks 14 RNC delegates. In Uinta County, where Romney won the earlier straw poll thing with 66%, Paul supporters were picked for all 14 of the state convention delegate slots. Similar reports from Campbell County as well.
• I've heard positive news from Ron Paul people in Gwinnett County, GA; something like a third of the district delegates ended up being Paulites.  At this point it looks quite possible that a Ron Paul majority will be picking GA 4th District's three RNC delegates. In Clarke County, on the other hand (where UGA is located; and Paul's best county) even though the attendance was 65-75% Paultards, the county GOP chair apparently passed the preselected delegate slate by a voice vote, announced it passed, then got the hell out of there. Uncertain if this'll brew into some sort of controversy.

[Bacon King]

Washington State news!

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http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2012/03/guest-post-ron-pauls-delegate-strategy.html

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Paulmentum!

[Bacon King]

Heard it through the grapeline that the Paulites will try to take the delegates in Florida - because they moved their primary that apparently means the Florida delegates are unbound.

Oh, wow, that's beautiful.

Also, on the subject of bound/unbound delegates: apparently, the GOP rules still allow delegates to abstain rather than vote for the candidate they're legally pledged to, so the Paulistas that are bound for Romney/Gingrich/Santorum on the first ballot are planning to force the convention open by voting "present".

[Bacon King]

And yeah, maybe the Paul delegates can boo really loudly during Romney's speech. But they'll just crank up the volume on the podium mics that feed into the TV and no one at home will have any idea of what's going on at the convention. Who cares if the delegates can't hear Romney? They can hear him in living rooms in Arvada and Dayton and Norfolk and that's all that matters in the end.

It's a rigged game but crying about it won't make it any less rigged.

Don't forget that literally hundreds of political journalists will be at the RNC- even if they manage to stage everything right for the TV audience, if something like this actually happens then "CHAOS IN TAMPA" would still easily be the biggest news item afterwards.

[Bacon King]

How many delegates will Ron Paul get out of Minnesota? Ton of delegates there an he was second.

If this pattern holds and he keeps getting 100% of state delegates from all his strong BPOU's and still ~50% from the places he did poorly, it's within the realm of possibility that he might get every single one of Minnesota's RNC delegates.

[Bacon King]

Even if Romney were to eek out a majority committed and the stealths were forced to go to Romney on first ballot, could they not simply walk out for the first vote and be forced abstinations to pull him under?

They may not even need to walk out- per RNC bylaws, it's apparently still legal for a delegate to vote "present" even if they're pledged to somebody.

[Bacon King]

Oh hey, there's apparently a Paultard effort to take in stealth delegates from Florida, too!

Some random county (45 state delegates total)

38 Ron Paul supporters
3 Romney supporters
2 Gingrich supporters
1 unrepentant Herman Cain supporter

[Bacon King]

This effort is only trying to get delegates allocated for Paul in the first round of voting right? It doesn't actually have a say in the men and women selected specifically from each state to go to the Convention does it?

Not at all. This is an effort to get bona fide Pautards to the RNC by any means possible, even if they have to be pledged to another candidate in the first round.