Posted on 09/01/2012 1:16:40 PM PDT by Lazamataz
Recently, the GOP passed some Presidential primary and delegate rules changes, in a very shady manner, that enraged conservatives. This rule will lessen the impact of delegates, and soften the voice of conservatives and Tea Party members. I was one of those who were enraged. In fact, I was at the front of the parade.
However, in life and especially in politics, not all is as it seems. One of Mitt Romney's closest advisors, a man by the name of James Bopp Jr., led the charge to prevent the rules from being this drastically changed. In a letter he wrote, he states:
This is the biggest power grab in the history of the Republican Party because it shifts the power to select delegates from the state party to the candidate. And it would make the Republican Party a top down, not bottom up party.
It would also hurt state parties because they use delegate selection as a way to honor party volunteers and party contributors. A Presidential candidate will have his own agenda for delegate selection. As a result, this always is a threat to party regulars who make up most of our delegates. But it is also a threat to both moderates and conservative who could be purged, depending on who is the Republican Presidential nominee.
This proposal is an over reaction to the problems in a few states where Ron Paul delegates threaten to not support the winning Presidential candidate. I agree that they should honor that pledge, but that can be fix by a few tweaks in a few state laws. Massachusetts handled this successfully by requiring an affidavit promising to vote for the candidate, Mitt Romney, who carried the state. But the Rules change here is overkill -- killing a fly with a sledgehammer.
After the Rules change imbroglio, I decided not to dash off a furious editorial, but instead to let time reveal all the workings, and to allow a little cooling off period. I'm glad I did. It's not as simple as it seemed.
Are there some scoundrels in the Republican party? Absolutely. John Boehner, who ruled against the floor vote in an entirely arbitrary way, springs to mind. One cannot help but think that Karl Rove clapped his chubby little hands together upon the Rules Change, as well. John Sununu, another villain in this power grab, may have been instrumental in removing key Florida delegates from the Rules Commitee. Perhaps the largest and most damning villain in the fiasco is Ben Ginsberg, who is Romney's chief legal advisor. It appears he was interested in even more power-consolidating Rules Changes.
There will be more revelations in the days ahead. It has been leaked to me that there will be more to follow, and that it may well show that Romney's camp initially wanted the Rules Change -- to undercut the Ron Paul brigades -- but when some of the party Establishment took the ball and ran too far downfield, that many in the Romney camp backed off of support. Of course, at that time, it was too late. The blue-blood establishment hacks had grabbed the concepts, racheted them up, and ran as hard as they could for the goal line.
So, we are starting to see the first glimmers of discontent in the Romney camp over the Rules Changes. If more follows, the changes may well be addressed -- with a little push from us, the Dreaded Grassroots.
The fact remains, though, that the Rules, having been changed, are horrific for the grassroots conservative and Tea Party members.
Romney, if he wants our support, should lead.
He should get in front of some conservative groups and let us know that the Rules will be changed again to allow our voices to be heard. We do understand if Romney himself cannot do it, since it is an old chestnut -- run to the right for nomination, run to the left for election -- but a high level surrogate would help us believe his intent.
The jury is still out. Is Romney willing to forego conservative support? We shall see. The blowback from a Romney rejection would be tragic for his election efforts.
Thanks for the ping SE and good write up Laz! If you were leading the parade Laz ,against this stuff, I was certainly bringing up the rear....lol. This sneaky and lowdown stuff really enraged me. I called the headquarters and the Romeny Campaign. The RNC has been calling my house for two days and I haven’t picked up the phone.....lol. Boehner has got to go. I have tried to be patient with that man but enough is enough. The bad thing is Eric Cantor is being groomed to take his place and he has become part of the establishment too.
Hope we have a lot of tea party victories this fall so we can flush the old guard.
Sorry, but I strongly disagree with you on that point. If I lived in Germany in WW2, I would hope I could have smuggled one Jew out of harm’s way — even though your position would suggest I should not waste my time and instead should be trying to change the system.
We need to change the system. We also need to take every opportunity within the system to save every life we can.
If we can save 10,000 lives by passing bills that provide some protection based on pain-awareness, I will strongly support those bills, not attack them.
The partial-birth-abortion ban saves lives. Those babies, when they grow up, will be glad that people didn’t agree with your “purity at all costs” mentality.
This is what I've been saying to people who claim 'we'll hold Romney's feet to the fire' or 'we'll primary Romney from the right in 2016'. I'm very glad to see it stated so eloquently by someone more learned than myself. Well done.
Damn....
Excellent points....thanks.
However, I did instruct in election law to Republican County Chairmen and election judges and clerks and I know the rules the national party must use in the national convention. My mouth actually dropped open what I saw on screen what was happening to destroy the Party by new rules and the votes were illegal by party rules but the national chairman and Boehner were the ones doing it in front of the whole convention body.
It takes pure gall and dishonesty to do that and they didn't care. They had Sununu right there with them doing that illegal work. Delegates asked for a role call vote and party rules say that must be done if requested and they refused to do it - that is illegal - against the rules.
I don't think people understand the Party was ripped from conservatives and Tea Party when this happened.
Eventually, it's going to become clear to others, but you and I and a few others see it now.
Have to tell you, when I saw that, I grieved at the death of any conservative influence in the Party.
Thanks for your post.
Thank you for your posts. Of all the reading I have done today, this thread has been THE most insightful. I am a former member of county and state executive committees. I became disillusioned... However, I am willing to fight again... just need some direction.
The grave problem with your analogy is that if you are an elected official in this country, you are not in the position of those who smuggled Jews. You are in the position of those who were in charge of the German government.
I have become convinced that even if you gave the Republicans 100% of the executive office and legislative seats they would not stop the abortion holocaust.
This is certainly true if those “Republicans” are Romney Republicans.
Which most of the Republicans elected to public office are now becoming.
After all, Romney’s positions leave unalienable rights alienable by courts, or majorities, or states, and subject to “exceptions” that leave every innocent child vulnerable to the threat of being butchered and killed in their mother’s womb.
Wow, even state executive committee. If you haven’t been working with your county chairman, like he/she doesn’t know you are there, he/she would give his/her eye teeth to have someone like you since you know the ropes. My county has our Republican office open all year so a person like you would have a job, like right now.
Even if your county office isn’t open all year, it probably is now until after the election. Just walk in, tell them who you are, what you have done, and get ready for hugs.
Thanks for posting.
Thanks for posting, Laz. Please sign me up as the next satisfied customer.
Much obliged...
Stop picking on the RNC, there EV.
By the looks of your delegates there, it appears that your 3rd party convention had no problems nominating you on the first ballot either.
Could someone create a petition that we all could sign?
Thank you so much for sharing your insights, dear Laz!
Please add me to your ping list. Thanks.
I'm trying to figure out which character he is in The Godfather.
'Tessio'...though drunk, unprincipled, it's a smart move. AND simiar to 'Tessio', tell the conservaties it was only business and that 'Tessio's' removal prevents further harm.
I don't think you are going far enough. Enough Middle class people are waking up to the fact that this economy will delay their retirement and still burden their children. We are moving from a center right to far right country. The 52% that pay all the taxes are not going to put up with the rest not having "skin in the game".
The dim party is pure evil but satan... for certain... has his tentacles deep within the gop/e. boenher and mcconnell (who was an utter embarrassment during his speech... looked like Mister MaGoo)... BOTH being master sumbiches and BOTH being liars... BOTH MUST GO!
LLS
I don’t disagree with your assessment. Politics ia a majority game, and at this point, we don’t have a majority in this country who have been educated enough to ban abortion.
Look at the fight over rape/incest exceptions — it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the reason abortion should be banned.
I believe that things like focusing on partial birth abortion and the pain an unborn feels are ways to educate people. When we discuss pain, people realise we are discussing a human feeling. When we force women to get ultrasounds (something that in and of itself does NOTHING to suggest abortion is murder), it makes women SEE that the baby is not a mass, but is a tiny human being.
When we banned partial birth abortion, it exposed the pro-abortionists who opposed it — nobody could doubt that a baby who was outside the womb was a human being, and yet there the abortionists were, arguing that since the baby was still attached, and still partly in the womb, it was the mother’s choice.
That argument allows us to now note that abortionists don’t care at all about life, they are really just about making money.
As to the analogy — I would argue that, for abortion, the elected officials are no more in a position of power than the smuggler. The court has ruled, and we can’t ban abortion until we fix the court, which we can’t do until we replace at least one more justice, and a pro-life justice will never be put on the court so long as Obama is president, and the democrats control the senate.
Say what you will about Bush, but he appears to have put 2 pro-life judges on the supreme court during his time in office. His father put one, Reagan put one. How many have democrats done?
But I digress. The problem is that the court has precluded an outright ban. And you might argue that a president could just ignore the court, but house members and senate members certainly can’t pull that trick.
What they CAN do is pass laws that save SOME of the babies, and also humanize the babies, which helps us win the hearts and minds of the people we need to save more babies.
I don’t disagree with your fight to reach the ultimate goal. What I strongly disagree with is your outright attacks on people because they aren’t saving as many lives as you wish.
When we get the supreme court to give abortion back to the states, I doubt half the states will ban abortion entirely. It could take generations to educate people on the value of human life — look how long it took to teach people that race is an artificial distinction.
Frankly, I think abortion will be illegal only by a providential act of God. I see it as a miracle we should pray for, not something we can expect government to provide. I hope it happens one way or another. Until then, I will support candidates who can WIN ELECTIONS, and save as many lives as we can, while espousing the principle that all life is sacred.
But there’s the big difference between the left and conservatives.
In a situation like this, the left would push for open class warfare and anger.
Conservatives, on the other hand, don’t want revenge, they want the non-productive Americans to become productive.
This is a pretty across the board philosophical difference as well. For example, crime and punishment.
The liberal approach is to create thousands of laws and send millions of people to prison, but that prisons shouldn’t be harsh places. Like a “time out” in elementary school.
Conservatives, on the other hand, don’t want thousands of laws, yet know that people who commit serious crimes need to be sent to prison; but those they send to prison they want to experience harsh punishment to deter them from doing it again. They would much prefer that people not commit crimes in the first place.
In any event, conservatives look at largess, in whatever form, as a bad thing, and something people need to be motivated away from because of the harm it inflicts on them and their children. But they also recognize that a small number of people cannot make it on their own, so need a “safety net”.
This is why they pushed for “workfare”, instead of just canceling welfare outright. They don’t want to hurt or inflict revenge, they want people to change and better their own lives.
Virtually every largess system can be seriously reformed with an eye to eventual elimination, with other systems picking up the slack. The trick is to do this while harming or cheating as few people as possible.
Actually, that's not the worst idea I've ever read!
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