TAMPA, FLA. - If the Republican National Convention takes on a Tea Party flavor with some libertarian spice, Mitt Romney backers can blame two women from Minnesota: Rep. Michele Bachmann and Marianne Stebbins.
Stebbins, a longtime GOP activist from Excelsior who led Ron Paul's Minnesota campaign, has become a key player in the fight to get Paul activists a front-and-center role at the convention.
Bachmann, who waited four months after dropping her own presidential bid to endorse Romney, headlined a fiery Tea Party rally on the eve of a convention choreographed to be a political coronation Romney.
"Our goal is not political power, our goal is to live free," Stebbins told thousands of Paul supporters who gathered at a college arena a few miles from the convention, where the libertarian Texas congressman will command upwards of 500 delegates, including most of Minnesota's delegates. "When politics becomes the goal, we have lost the mission."
The Sunday rallies are the freshest threats to GOP efforts to portray the party as solidly behind Romney.
With many Minnesota GOP delegates firmly backing Paul, the state's GOP activists are at the forefront of a ragtag and tenacious collection of small-government libertarians who are ushering in what is proving to be one of the most transformative political movements in a generation.
Paul lashed out at Republican efforts to marginalize his supporters at the convention, telling those at the Sunday rally to stand firm because "we will become the tent eventually."
In a New York Times story published on Sunday, Paul complained that he was denied a chance to speak to the convention because he refused to let the Romney campaign vet his remarks and give an unconditional endorsement.
Learning how to fight
Stebbins, the only Minnesotan to speak at Paul's Sunday rally, talked about the scrappy origins of the Paul campaign in Minnesota, growing from obscurity to becoming a driving force in state Republican politics.
She described the Paul uprising as beginning about five years ago, when many "introverts and nerds crawled out of their parents' basements" and got involved, alarmed at the amount of government intrusion in their lives.
She talked about how they became friends first, then allies. The Paul supporters helped each others' businesses, set up ham radios and began "drinking raw milk from each others' farms."
"The overriding thing we had in common was that we wanted to live free," she said.
But they also have learned not to back down from a fight.
n the weeks leading up to the convention, Stebbins and other Ron Paul delegates were locked in a testy and increasingly public spat with Romney's campaign as it tried to tamp down any uprising and get control over which delegates are seated.
"Governor Romney's campaign ... adopted an attitude toward liberty Republicans that if you can't beat them, then beat them with a stick," Stebbins said last week. Romney's campaign "made it clear today that liberty Republicans and Tea Party Republicans are unwelcome guests at this party."
Republican National Committee leaders have been frantically negotiating with Ron Paul supports to cut a deal to prevent a convention-floor drama that could turn into an embarrassment for the presumptive nominee. Romney supporters have been fretting that Paul supporters could bring the opening ceremonies to a grinding and public halt. In a show of goodwill, the Romney campaign agreed to help add several key Paul principles to the GOP platform, including tough language about monetary policy. The Romney campaign also agreed to give Paul's son, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a prime speaking spot at the convention.
That was not enough for Stebbins and many of the most devout Paul backers. She blasted the "party establishment" for snuffing out "the discussion of issues important to Americans but that might challenge party candidates."
Paul supporters said on Sunday that the party's candidates have strayed from Republican fundamentals and that they see themselves as a corrective force. Without naming Romney specifically, many speakers blasted fellow Republicans who have lost their way as much as they took shots at President Obama.
