An assessment of the LA caucuses

[stevedasbach]

I disagree. This is a deceitful political tactic to disenfranchise Ron Paul supporters, who shouldn't be faulted. The pro-life vote was really a coalition of all the other candidates. The fact that all delegates are nominally undecided is just sophistry.

Consider this. Were this tactic implemented in every state, then candidate A, with 40% of the people's support, could conceivably be taken out of the race in the first stage by a coalition of canidates B-G, each with 10% support. That violates the principles of our representative democracy and is like something out of a third world sham election.

How many times have Ron Paul supporters posted that we want all the neocons to remain in the race spliting the vote so that Paul can will with a small plurality. How is that different?

Is it a "violation of our representative democracy" that Thompson stayed in the race for South Carolina, probably taking votes that would have otherwise gone to Huckabee and enabling McCain to win?

The other side used a legitimate tactic against us in Louisiana. Once the provisional ballots are counted, we'll have a better idea how successful it was.

 

[GoDrNo]

Has this trickery ever been used before to subvert the democratic favorite? We change laws because not everything that's legal is right or the best way.

I'm pretty sure that creating voter blocs to make sure that you have enough votes to get your agenda heard has been used since the very first time people decided that casting votes was better than beating each other up side the head to decide an issue.

Basically it's how any system with political parties work. Instead of having 62,000,000 votes cast willy nilly people band together to create a voter bloc (GOP, Dem. Party, Libertarian Party), by getting all the people in their bloc to vote for the same candidate/issue they have a better chance of winning.

 

[Computer]

OMG! He is not the favorite! I don't believe people like you! Do you really believe that an ACTUAL majority of the population of any state in this country PREFER Ron Paul? Of course not...corruption maybe a little, but sir, you are proposing an out right absurdity. This is why we must be more organized, more willing to stay the course. It will be an UPHILL battle, not because of corruption, but because not enough of our fellow citizens have woke up to the reality of the problems are nation faces. Please, please, take a deep breath and get back out there to the battle field.

Or as we say in the Army, stretch and drink water.

S

Turning out voters/caucusers is a legitimate political tactic and it is a measurement of the passion of the candidate's supporters. While we may not have a majority, it sounds like we had a clear, bold plurality of caucus goers. Therfore, we were disenfranchised by shady backroom deals. It sucks. I think it should be challenged just to shine the light of day on it. It's BS. We're nominating an individual in this process. For some individuals to covertly coalesce into a coalition, vanquish the front runner, then de-coalesce later on, it's absurd, particularly when the coalition is hidden behiond words and sophistry.

 

[speciallyblend]

your post was good but one fatal error they were not uncommited they were rudy/huckabee supporters thats not uncommited there ticket was a complete lie the pro life/family ticket is a complete false lie

 

[jdmetz]

your post was good but one fatal error they were not uncommited they were rudy/huckabee supporters thats not uncommited

They were the local top GOP members who have been involved in the GOP for years. If they happen to support rudy/huckabee or anyone else it just shows that we've failed to convert the establishment. It should not be a surprise to us that the establishment GOP knows what they are doing and want to be in control.

Anyway, they could still be converted to Ron Paul, so that is what needs to be done now.

 

[jdmetz]

Maybe we should have run as the PRO-FREEDOM or PRO-CONSTITUTION or PRO-AMERICAN slate.

I think most mainstream GOP voters care more about pro-life.

 

[josh24601]

My first post here was almost identical to this one.

I gave up. Most people here are reactionary short-term thinkers. There are a good amount that aren't, and are level-headed and are thinking about 5-10 years from now and what the message could be and how it can be built into something, and they are why I still hang around.

But most people here are either new to Ron Paul, new to politics, new to conservativism, etc. And they have zero patience, and will probably move on to something else after they don't get their win-or-nothing. It's just a fact, unfortunately. It's that same volatility in thinking that brought them here from wherever they came, and it's what will prompt them to jump on a new train once their unreasonable hopes are dashed.

I just ignore them all now, or I'd have to never come to these forums.

 

[Computer]

My first post here was almost identical to this one.

I gave up. Most people here are reactionary short-term thinkers. There are a good amount that aren't, and are level-headed and are thinking about 5-10 years from now and what the message could be and how it can be built into something, and they are why I still hang around.

But most people here are either new to Ron Paul, new to politics, new to conservativism, etc. And they have zero patience, and will probably move on to something else after they don't get their win-or-nothing. It's just a fact, unfortunately. It's that same volatility in thinking that brought them here from wherever they came, and it's what will prompt them to jump on a new train once their unreasonable hopes are dashed.

I just ignore them all now, or I'd have to never come to these forums.

Let me say what you just said with less words:

If you support fairness in elections, then you're a fair weather supporter of Dr. Paul.

 

[FluffyUnbound]

I know what's legal, but you have to look at the broader, natural principles and assumptions of our democracy, which these "legal" tactics clearly violate. Has this trickery ever been used before to subvert the democratic favorite? We change laws because not everything that's legal is right or the best way.

You are being silly.

Those "unfair" rules were what gave us a chance to win this thing in the first place - because it created a little-attended caucus where the candidate names didn't appear on the ballot and where with some luck and some good grassroots organizing we could turn a couple of thousand votes into grabbing the delegates for a state with millions in population.

Someone else just [apparently - it ain't over] did a better job than we did at playing those rules.

Without the antidemocratic rules you're complaining about, we never would have had a chance in the first place.

 

[FluffyUnbound]

Turning out voters/caucusers is a legitimate political tactic and it is a measurement of the passion of the candidate's supporters. While we may not have a majority, it sounds like we had a clear, bold plurality of caucus goers. Therfore, we were disenfranchised by shady backroom deals. It sucks. I think it should be challenged just to shine the light of day on it. It's BS. We're nominating an individual in this process. For some individuals to covertly coalesce into a coalition, vanquish the front runner, then de-coalesce later on, it's absurd, particularly when the coalition is hidden behiond words and sophistry.

OK, now we'll do your post with fewer words:

We were disenfranchised because we weren't allowed to win with less than a majority of a tiny fraction of voters.

 

[josh24601]

Let me say what you just said with less words:

If you support fairness in elections, then you're a fair weather supporter of Dr. Paul.

Actually, what I said is most Ron Paul supporters have unrealistic expectations and become emotional and petulant when what they unreasonably anticipate doesn't come to fruition.

But thanks for reminding me, I forgot to add that when this happens, they have a tendency to blame various types of conspiracies for the failure of their imagined realities to materialize.

 

[Computer]

You are being silly.

Those "unfair" rules were what gave us a chance to win this thing in the first place - because it created a little-attended caucus where the candidate names didn't appear on the ballot and where with some luck and some good grassroots organizing we could turn a couple of thousand votes into grabbing the delegates for a state with millions in population.

Someone else just [apparently - it ain't over] did a better job than we did at playing those rules.

Without the antidemocratic rules you're complaining about, we never would have had a chance in the first place.

I don't think so. We were there to support an individual human being running for the presidency. Our strategy was to win by TURNOUT, which is legitimate in a representative democracy. We were beat by a legal, artificial corporate entity of the opposition's supporters, who will now dissolve into regular individual humans. The entity was nominally composed of "undecided" delagates who were "for" life and families. Their strategy was to win by a covert, temporary INCORPORATION.

 

[Doriath]

A thought experiment:

Suppose that instead of Paul and McCain having the only two (mostly) complete delegate slates, it had been Romney and McCain, and Paul had only a partial list.

And then suppose that before the caucuses the Paul, Thompson and Huckabee delegates combined their partial slates into one "pro life/pro family" slate. And that as a result they got some delegates, instead of running each alone and losing all to Romney and McCain.

Question: In this case, would RP supporters be bashing RP for "undemocratic" tactics? Or would they be praising a canny political move that made sure Ron didn't get shut out in LA?

 

[josh24601]

We were beat by a legal corporate entity of the opposition's supporters, who will know dissolve into regular individual humans.

Sometimes I think we really are the lunatic fringe. I guess I should take my own advice and ignore this stuff, but I become more and more concerned that most of this movement is thinking this way.

I don't know where to begin... Legal corporate entity? Do you just make things up? Dissolve into humans?

 

[Computer]

Sometimes I think we really are the lunatic fringe. I guess I should take my own advice and ignore this stuff, but I become more and more concerned that most of this movement is thinking this way.

I don't know where to begin... Legal corporate entity? Do you just make things up? Dissolve into humans?

I'm eliminating the obfuscation so that we can understand more clearly what took place. That is not lunacy. We were disenfranchised by a coalition, yet we're nominating an individual. If you go back and forth from coalitions to individuals, it can subvert the will of the people. The worse thing is, this was done with a high degree of obfuscation. Now that this coalition has eliminated the favorite, it will morph into the individual candidates again. I don't blame people for not getting what is happening. It's very sophisticated.

 

[Computer]

A thought experiment:

Suppose that instead of Paul and McCain having the only two (mostly) complete delegate slates, it had been Romney and McCain, and Paul had only a partial list.

And then suppose that before the caucuses the Paul, Thompson and Huckabee delegates combined their partial slates into one "pro life/pro family" slate. And that as a result they got some delegates, instead of running each alone and losing all to Romney and McCain.

Question: In this case, would RP supporters be bashing RP for "undemocratic" tactics? Or would they be praising a canny political move that made sure Ron didn't get shut out in LA?

Question: Is it relevant? It's often up to the victims to illuminate injustices.

 

[Computer]

A thought experiment:

Suppose that instead of Paul and McCain having the only two (mostly) complete delegate slates, it had been Romney and McCain, and Paul had only a partial list.

And then suppose that before the caucuses the Paul, Thompson and Huckabee delegates combined their partial slates into one "pro life/pro family" slate. And that as a result they got some delegates, instead of running each alone and losing all to Romney and McCain.

Question: In this case, would RP supporters be bashing RP for "undemocratic" tactics? Or would they be praising a canny political move that made sure Ron didn't get shut out in LA?

People are just so dang smitten with undemocratic flourishes. Why don't you move to Venezuela? You'll have ample opportunity to admire many "canny political moves".

 

[Anna Karenina]

I disagree. This is a deceitful political tactic to disenfranchise Ron Paul supporters, who shouldn't be faulted. The pro-life vote was really a coalition of all the other candidates. The fact that all delegates are nominally undecided is just sophistry.

Consider this. Were this tactic implemented in every state, then candidate A, with 40% of the people's support, could conceivably be taken out of the race in the first stage by a coalition of canidates B-G, each with 10% support. That violates the principles of our representative democracy and is like something out of a third world sham election.

You have a great point. Could RP delegates have omitted RP's name entirely and called themselves the Pro-Life, Pro-Constitution, Pro-America slate? This is something to think about for future caucuses and elections that have similar opportunities.

 

[sidsquidrick]

I'm eliminating the obfuscation so that we can understand more clearly what took place. That is not lunacy. We were disenfranchised by a coalition, yet we're nominating an individual. If you go back and forth from coalitions to individuals, it can subvert the will of the people. The worse thing is, this was done with a high degree of obfuscation. Now that this coalition has eliminated the favorite, it will morph into the individual candidates again. I don't blame people for not getting what is happening. It's very sophisticated.

Great clarification...in four years we need to remember this...chances are we are going to be fighting this fight in four years.
Before I get jumped as uncommitted too, I say that not because Ron can't win the nomination, but because no matter what, we need to keep fighting for the constitution EVERY election. This is a lifelong fight.

S

 

[josh24601]

I'm eliminating the obfuscation so that we can understand more clearly what took place. That is not lunacy. We were disenfranchised by a coalition, yet we're nominating an individual. If you go back and forth from coalitions to individuals, it can subvert the will of the people. The worse thing is, this was done with a high degree of obfuscation. Now that this coalition has eliminated the favorite, it will morph into the individual candidates again. I don't blame people for not getting what is happening. It's very sophisticated.

So why, in your mind, did people vote for the candidates that represented themselves as pro-life and pro-family? Are they not pro-life and pro-family? Are they going to go to their convention and vote for something other than pro-life or pro-family? How exactly is any voters' will who voted for them being subverted?

It was the people of Louisiana who decided to grant victory to a slate of delegates that were a coalition that did not represent a single person, but rather an idea - that being that pro-life and pro-family (whatever that must mean to them) was more important than any single person. THE PEOPLE OF LOUISIANA MADE THIS DECISION.

In the marketplace of ideas, this pro-life pro-family slate knew what it's market wanted, and provided it. Ron Paul did not. Don't make up some type of conspiracy when the voters of Louisiana clearly and of sound and sober mind decided that they would rather elect a coalition of delegates committed to single issues than any actual one person.

Your problem is with the people of Louisiana, but because you are a populist reactionary, you are trying to invent some type of conspiracy where not only are the people not to blame, but if only they weren't being "oppressed", you would have actually got what you wanted!