CPUd
Member
- Joined
- May 12, 2012
- Messages
- 22,978
There has been a GJ push; it's complicated because GJ "campaigners" have been all over sites like DailyPaul, antagonizing the members there since early in the primaries. I only started following what was happening this year, but I've heard people mention it was a lot messier in 2008.
When GJ switched to the LP, it was a small problem, because while the movement in general is not confined to one party, most of the organizational efforts were being done from within the GOP. People had already started getting committee seats, and some were running for local offices as GOP. That's part of the plan- there are people who are strictly activists, but there are also people who work in politics, and the rules they work under are not always in alignment with one another. For instance, there are some things in politics you just can't say, and really, most of what you can say has to be very specifically worded. It doesn't necessarily mean they are trying to be sneaky, it's about not giving an opponent (and the media) something to use against you.
So the ones who have vested interests in the GOP, you won't see very many coming out publicly for GJ- that's a quick way to lose a committee seat for violating party bylaws. It has happened to a couple folks already since the convention. The press is aware of this, and if you look at some of the interviews with the delegates, particularly after they unseated the Maine delegation and everybody was pissed off, question #1: "will you go campaign for/against Mitt?" The delegate would simply say "I'm going to focus on local races."
Because what happened at the convention was done in plain sight of all the delegates, the local GOPs are seeing the RNC in a whole new light. What made that possible is the Ron Paul people stood their ground and forced the RNC to move the goalposts. The final tally showed Ron Paul with around 190 votes, but if none of the delegates were bound, that number would have been in the 600-800 range. And even in the midst of all this- while delegates were organizing for their conventions, and recovering from bitter fights all the way through to the RNC, the garys were carpet bombing the boards, trying to get people to go campaign for GJ. This is but a couple reasons why many will write in Ron Paul whether it gets counted or not.
I never liked their 5% argument, because what is stopping the establishment from retroactively changing that to 8%? During the primaries, many states had a 10-15% popular vote threshold a candidate must meet in order to be awarded any bound delegates. If that state's number was 15%, Ron Paul would get 12%. If that state's number was 10%, Ron Paul would get 6%.
And someone elsewhere today pointed out that Nader got > 5% with the Green Party in several states in 2000. But where was Jill Stein during the Mitt/Obama debates? She got arrested trying to get in.
The truth is that the Presidential race is just a distraction from where the real focus should be- the Congress. Aside from the differences over the Presidential race, I see most of the people in the movement sticking together for the long game.
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