On election day, we learned that it's one thing to dis Ron Paul and his delegates. It's quite another to disenfranchise them. Ron Holland writes:
The world knows how the Romney campaign and GOP establishment trashed Ron Paul and his supporters during the GOP primary season and in front of millions at the GOP national convention.
… The Republican Party would have captured the Senate and they would have millions of young supporters promoting both the party and our freedom agenda. But this was not to be, due to the arrogance and animosity of the GOP big-wigs and the Republican operatives running the Romney campaign.
This from Muir Boda:
The Republican Party had an opportunity to bring into its fold a generation of a well-organized grass roots effort. It had an opportunity to appeal to millions of independent, unaffiliated and libertarian leaning Americans who did one of three things, vote for Gary Johnson, write in Ron Paul or not vote at all.
Instead, Mitt Romney and the Republican Establishment did everything they could to silence, hinder and obstruct Ron Paul and his supporters. They changed the rules at the last minute at the Republican National Convention, looked for ways to disqualify Paul’s delegates and tried to disrupt its own nominating process in every state. Simply put, Mitt Romney did not have to cheat to win the Republican nomination, but he did anyway.
I'd like to agree with these assessments, but I can't help but think about how close the election was - even with Paul followers eschewing the GOP. Romney and the GOP machine still got 58 million votes to Obama's 60 million. While I realize that votes by states and electoral paths matter more, and that swing states could have resulted differently with more republican votes, it was still close without Dr. Paul's happy band of liberty lovers.
Maybe we mattered more in local political races? But at the federal level I'm not so sure. Also, I wonder just how badly the GOP really wanted this current mess. With a dodgy economy, a looming fiscal cliff, and Obamacare coming online in 2014, it could be they have more to gain in the coming years with the democrats donning the façade of "conductor" during a train wreck.
Maybe I'm giving them too much credit and that they truly are controlling, power-hungry goons bent on severely breaking their own rules to portray a unified neocon front. Answers to such questions will appear in the future. Hopefully, more liberty will come, bringing with it the answers I wanted to hear.
