I am not for Ron Paul, but equally not a fan of the GOPe. I guess you have to pick you battles these days. I am 100% against the left and Obama. But I am no fan of the Rinos. It’s become a minefield.
I just know that what the GOPe did also hurt conservatives and that is what they wanted.
If it had been a true conservative candidate and they had delegates at the convention and were challenging Romney or whoever they wanted then the same thing would have been done.
You do get Santorum won plenty of Republican and Conservative leaning states and it did not do a thing to help him win the nomination. But Romney won all the Progressive Liberal states and he won the nomination. Ohio, Florida and Wisconsin are purple states which Romney won despite recent gains by Republicans. And Arizona is becoming more and more rino despite recent conservative gains and the immigration stances of Governor Jan Brewer. So that state is not really conservative. And Utah and Nevada is Mormon country. So they don’t count wither. And after the Wisconsin and Pennsylvania primaries the rest of the primaries that were falsely had just to get Romney to the magic number; don’t count. Romney was way ahead and the other candidates ended up dropping out.
The problem was that we had 4 or 5 conservatives that badly split the vote. At the end, we had Gingrich and Santorum and neither would concede, each arguing that they were the better candiate and as a result, Romney ended up winning by a plurality because conservatives split their vote. It was not the GOP-e that gave us Romney, but rather the egos of the other candidates.
I hear you (and others) on the whole establishment vs the grass roots thing, but I don’t see this power play as being anti conservative/grass roots, but rather an action that they felt that they had to take to fend off the Paul supporters attempt to blow up Romney’s convention. Doesn’t make it right, I know, but Romney is the nominee whether we like it or not, and the selfish, self-interested and immature Paul supporters wanted to give Romney a bloody nose at the convention. They made this action necessary.