Ron Paul says Trump doesn't understand how the rigging works.

[Peace&Freedom]

Cryin' Don didn't kick over a damn thing. He makes it harder for a real grassroots candidate to win next time around, because 1) they won't be taken seriously when real cheating happens, and 2) switching from a caucus to a primary is exactly what the "establishment" wants.

Donald Trump is correct that the process is rigged, but is dangerously wrong on what is being rigged. Now you are going to have all his low information followers complaining that the entire thing should be a primary which is exactly what the establishment wants and will embrace.

Trump has not been complaining about caucuses in general, only the recent "caucuses" where voters were not involved in allocating delegates based on their candidate preference. Even in a republic, voters are at least indirectly involved. Trump probably wouldn't mind if all states became caucus states, so long as voting for candidates was the real dynamic, instead of it being insiders doing both the allocating and selecting of delegates.

 

[CPUd]

Trump has not been complaining about caucuses in general, only the recent "caucuses" where voters were not involved in allocating delegates based on their candidate preference. Even in a republic, voters are at least indirectly involved. Trump probably wouldn't mind if all states became caucus states, so long as voting for candidates was the real dynamic, instead of it being insiders doing both the allocating and selecting of delegates.

He's complaining because he lost. The "Trumpertantrum" was planned some time after Manafort was hired and told him it was too late to get his people into the state conventions. This is because on March 1st, precinct caucuses were held all over Colorado, where any registered GOP could go and vote; if Trump wanted votes, all he had to do was have his supporters run for delegate, make it known they were for Trump, and get people out to the precincts to vote. Over 60,000 voted in CO, very few Trump supporters ran for delegate all the way up to the state convention, so they were outnumbered 4 to 1. In WY, there was a straw poll on March 12 for some of the delegates, here are the results:

I'm willing to bet the CO results if they had a straw poll would look much like WY.

 

[erowe1]

Trump has not been complaining about caucuses in general, only the recent "caucuses" where voters were not involved in allocating delegates based on their candidate preference.

Voters were involved. The ones who didn't participate chose not to.

Trump probably wouldn't mind if all states became caucus states, so long as voting for candidates was the real dynamic, instead of it being insiders doing both the allocating and selecting of delegates.

Baloney. Trump's complaints have nothing to do with any of that. It's 100% about being a sore loser.

And honestly I don't know if he even really means it. I think he might want to lose the nomination and is happy about the chance to say he was cheated out of it. That way he can avoid the consequences of both winning and losing.

 

[Peace&Freedom]

He's complaining because he lost. The "Trumpertantrum" was planned some time after Manafort was hired and told him it was too late to get his people into the state conventions.

That is, Mannafort fully briefed him that it was a rigged game, and Trump chose not to play. If the final decision on delegates in CO was to be made by insiders at the state convention, Trump could have had a thousand people on the ground in the weeks prior and it would have made no difference.

Voters were involved. The ones who didn't participate chose not to.

Incomplete. The voters were involved in CO in voting for delegates, not candidates. Voters did not participate in choosing who those delegates would be bound to, which was only determined at the state convention, which was controlled by insiders.

Baloney. Trump's complaints have nothing to do with any of that. It's 100% about being a sore loser.

And honestly I don't know if he even really means it. I think he might want to lose the nomination and is happy about the chance to say he was cheated out of it. That way he can avoid the consequences of both winning and losing.

One can speculate that way about all the candidates. Maybe Hillary is doing all her campaigning as a vanity project, and doesn't want to face winning or losing wither. Maybe Cruz is just a stalking horse for Hillary, and is being unlikeable on purpose, to ruin the Republican brand. See how easy it is to negatively paint anybody?

All we really know is, Trump has repeatedly said he doesn't want to play a crooked game, because he doesn't want to own the outcome of playing with crooks. If you're losing the game, it's because you played by the crook's rules, which favored the crooks to begin with. If you're winning (as Paul supporters found out in 2012), the crooks will change the rules. Given that reality, the best move is not to play, while calling it the rigged game that it is.

 

[erowe1]

Incomplete. The voters were involved in CO in voting for delegates, not candidates. Voters did not participate in choosing who those delegates would be bound to

That was by their own choice. They had caucuses to determine who would represent them at the state convention, and they could have sent Trump supporters there. They didn't.

Nobody stopped them from doing it. Nobody tricked them. Nobody made it hard for them. They just didn't do it, plain and simple.

 

[erowe1]

All we really know is, Trump has repeatedly said he doesn't want to play a crooked game

That isn't all we really know.

We also really know that he's being utterly disingenuous when he pretends to care about whether it's crooked. Playing crooked games is Trump's bread and butter.

We also really know that the reason he lost Colorado wasn't because of any crookedness, but 100% because of the failure of him and his supporters to do what was necessary to win. This undeniable fact sheds a certain light on his and your harping about crooked games.

 

[CPUd]

That is, Mannafort fully briefed him that it was a rigged game, anf Trump chose not to play. If the final decision in CO was to be made by insiders at the state convention, having a thousand people on the ground in the months prior would have made no difference.

The final decision was not made by insiders; it was made by the delegates who were elected on March 1 all the way up to the state convention. If Trump turned out his people on March 1, it would be Trump delegates making those decisions.

All we really know is, Trump has repeatedly said he doesn't want to play a crooked game, because he doesn't want to own the outcome of playing with crooks. If you're losing the game, it's because you played by the crook's rules, which favored the crooks to begin with. If you're winning (as Paul supporters found out in 2012), the crooks will change the rules. Given that reality, the best move is not to play, while calling it the rigged game that it is.

Trump has played with political crooks all his career. He's got a handful of the dirtiest currently running his campaign.

 

[Peace&Freedom]

That was by their own choice. They had caucuses to determine who would represent them at the state convention, and they could have sent Trump supporters there. They didn't.

Nobody stopped them from doing it. Nobody tricked them. Nobody made it hard for them. They just didn't do it, plain and simple.

The voters did not get to choose, because the delegates were not representing them, as the candidate the local delegates represented did not reflect who the delegates would be bound to, who would be going to the RNC convention. The voters did not get to choose the candidate and in some way allocate the national delegates, plain and simple.

The final decision was not made by insiders; it was made by the delegates who were elected on March 1 all the way up to the state convention. If Trump turned out his people on March 1, it would be Trump delegates making those decisions.

See above. Those local delegates did not get converted into national delegates, to reflect the preference of the local voters who supported Trump. Those voters were disenfranchised, since their preference was cancelled out at the state convention. That was the entire point of the insiders setting up the unbound system in that state, to cut out the local voters from allocating delegates through expressing their candidate choice.

 

[erowe1]

The voters did not get to choose, because the delegates were not representing them

The voters chose those delegates. The people those delegates represented were the ones who showed up to vote. Trump's supporters simply didn't show up. They could have elected delegates who would have represented them by sending Trump delegates to the RNC. They just chose not to participate.

The voters did choose the candidate by choosing the delegates who were going to choose the candidate.

 

[Peace&Freedom]

The voters chose those delegates. The people those delegates represented were the ones who showed up to vote. Trump's supporters simply didn't show up. They could have elected delegates who would have represented them by sending Trump delegates to the RNC. They just chose not to participate.

The voters did choose the candidate by choosing the delegates who were going to choose the candidate.

Only those local delegates didn't choose the national delegates, the controllers of the state convention did, which made the voters choice of local delegates a nothing burger. No matter how many Trump delegates showed up at the state con, the state GOP was going to select national delegates who were all Cruz, which is what they did. You can keep cleaning it up all you want to, but this is not voters choosing candidates, or voters allocating delegates to national.

 

[CPUd]

Only those local delegates didn't choose the national delegates, the controllers of the state convention did, which made the voters choice of local delegates a nothing burger. No matter how many Trump delegates showed up at the state con, the state GOP was going to select national delegates who were all Cruz, which is what they did. You can keep cleaning it up all you want to, but this is not voters choosing candidates, or voters allocating delegates to national.

Where are you getting this from? Because it is completely false.

 

[erowe1]

Only those local delegates didn't choose the national delegates, the controllers of the state convention did

Source?

(mod edit)

 

[HVACTech]

Where are you getting this from? Because it is completely false.

true that, the "Republicans" would NEVER bear false witness. right?

 

[Peace&Freedom]

The Denver Post's summary of the CO con:

Colorado GOP leaders canceled the party’s presidential straw poll in August to avoid binding its delegates to a candidate who may not survive until the Republican National Convention in July.

Instead, Republicans selected national delegates through the caucus process, a move that put the election of national delegates in the hands of party insiders and activists — leaving roughly 90 percent of the more than 1 million Republican voters on the sidelines.

Ryan McMaken, on the Colorado con and the "if you missed the fine print, tough" used car salesman excuse making for all the gaming:

...It’s rather laughable that the caucus system is put out there by Republican activist types — many of whom are knee-jerk anti-democracy types — that caucusing is somehow more “rational” and less subject to “mob rule” than an ordinary primary, in which all Republicans would be able to vote. Those video clips of delegates being paraded up to give ten-second speeches well illustrates the true amount of rational debate and discussion that takes place at these conventions: there isn’t any. Mob rule is alive and well at GOP conventions. The numbers are simply smaller.

The process is designed so that a majority of people present (that is, a majority of party activists and hacks who have immense amounts of free time to attend these meetings) steamroll everyone else.

Considering this, we’re forced to conclude that Trump likely had no chance of winning a majority of delegates at the state convention even under slightly different rules. Most of Trump’s supporters are working-class types outside the Party’s activist core, and few of them understand the convoluted delegate process. Basically, considering the Party rules, Cruz won fair and square.

That said, most of those who are defending the GOP process don’t realize how out-of-touch they look. Party hacks are so devoted to their little club that they are blinded to how corrupt and fixed it looks to outsiders. Anyone who hasn’t drunk the political-party Kool-Aid can see that the entire system is rigged to favor the chosen favorites of the elites. Slogans put out by apologists for the party system such as “parties are private organizations!” and “we’re a republic not a democracy!” just make them look all the more divorced from the general public’s views of how politics should work.

Many of those on the outside recognize — whether they say it explicitly or not — that the party system exists to limit voter choice to the favored candidates of wealthy elites in both parties...

And here's the resolution to prevent CO delegates from voting for Trump:

And guess who exactly were behind the GOP's decision last year to stop an initiative to hold a CO primary (again as per the Denver Post):

In May of 2015, four Colorado Senate Republicans killed an initiative “to create a presidential primary in 2016,” reported the Denver Post. “Under the bill, Colorado would have held a presidential primary in March that ran parallel with the state’s complicated caucus system… when it came before the Senate Appropriations Committee, four Republicans voted to kill the bill with three Democrats supporting it.”

The four Republicans who voted against the initiative were Sen. Kevin Grantham, Sen. Kent Lambert, Sen. Laura Woods, and Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg.

On Cruz’s campaign website, Sens. Woods, Grantham, and Lambert are all listed as Cruz supporters and as declared members of Cruz’s “Colorado Leadership team.”

 

[CPUd]

The Denver Post's summary of the CO con:



Ryan McMaken, on the Colorado con and the "if you missed the fine print, tough" used car salesman excuse making for all the gaming:



And here's the resolution to prevent CO delegates from voting for Trump:

And guess who exactly were behind the GOP's decision last year to stop an initiative to hold a CO primary (again as per the Denver Post):

It was the responsibility of the Trump campaign to find their own local party leaders and activists to run for delegate. That's why well-organized campaigns have teams who go out and identify these people. If Trump was such a popular candidate, this would have not been a problem. Cruz is only slightly more popular than Trump and they had a full slate. Ron 2012 had plenty of people willing to give their time and money to work their way through the delegate process when other campaigns like Santorum were left hanging in the wind just like the Trump 2016 supporters.

 

[Peace&Freedom]

It was the responsibility of the Trump campaign to find their own local party leaders and activists to run for delegate. That's why well-organized campaigns have teams who go out and identify these people. If Trump was such a popular candidate, this would have not been a problem. Cruz is only slightly more popular than Trump and they had a full slate. Ron 2012 had plenty of people willing to give their time and money to work their way through the delegate process when other campaigns like Santorum were left hanging in the wind just like the Trump 2016 supporters.

It's the responsibility of the campaign to not waste resources on a rigged game, that was designed to defeat them no matter how strong its ground game was. A good campaign does not obligate itself to pour funds into a money pit, or play a stilted game where the outcome was already decided. The CO set-up made the local vote and local delegates irrelevant, as they were to be steamrolled at the state convention controlled by the hack insiders, who were only going to be selecting national delegates for Cruz. The cut-out of the voters and cynical gaming was even admitted by the former CO GOP Chair:

Former Colorado state Republican party chairman Ryan Call talked to Laura Ingraham today to explain the delegation-selection process works and how it "cuts out any semblance of democracy or the popular will." Call said the statewide convention that chooses the delegates reinforces all the worst stereotypes of the party.

"The very time we should be opening up our doors and being more open and transparent, and welcoming people into our Party, we’ve essentially made the decision to close it off and make it more cumbersome and more difficult. And, to prevent the ability of people to have their voice heard in this process. You’re reinforcing all of the very worst stereotypes about the Party and I, frankly, am very concerned about the way voters are going to feel," Call told Ingraham.

 

[CPUd]

It's the responsibility of the campaign to not waste resources on a rigged game, that was designed to defeat them no matter how strong its ground game was. A good campaign does not obligate itself to pour funds into a money pit, or play a stilted game where the outcome was already decided. The CO set-up made the local vote and local delegates irrelevant, as they were to be steamrolled at the state convention controlled by the hack insiders, who were only going to be selecting national delegates for Cruz. The cut-out of the voters and cynical gaming was even admitted by the former CO GOP Chair:

Show where the national delegates were chosen by "party insiders" who were not elected as precinct delegates on March 1.

Here's a list:
http://cologop.org/wp-content/uploa...ryReport-National-Delegate-by-Vote-totals.pdf

 

[CPUd]

FWIW, this was the official Cruz slate. They had it printed on t-shirts:

and the statewide delegates/alternates:

There was no need to cheat, the trump delegates were greatly outnumbered.

 

[CPUd]

Q&A from local press:

Back to presidential politics for a minute. It’s 2016— a presidential election year! Will March 1 have any bearing on the presidential race for Colorado Republicans?

Yes, in a way.

If you go to a Republican precinct caucus on March 1, you’ll be helping elect delegates to the next level. The levels after the March 1 precinct caucuses are the congressional conventions and the state convention. These delegates selected March 1 at the precinct caucuses are people who will eventually go on to make up 34 of the state GOP’s 37 delegates at the national convention held later this year in Cleveland. So if you have a favorite presidential candidate, you’ll want to make sure you elect delegates who also support that candidate. And plenty of the presidential campaigns are trying to figure out the best strategy for getting their candidate help in Colorado on March 1.

So if I’m not a diehard, party-building type, but I’m still a registered Republican and I want to participate, why should I spend time on March 1 to caucus?

Other than that it just might be your duty as a registered voter in a major political party to participate in local elections and make your voice heard about who should represent you and your party?

Well, if you want to nationalize it, if you have a favorite Republican candidate for the White House who you want to see nominated by the Republican Party, then you can get in on the ground floor early to find out who of your local potential delegates are also in your corner. And, most importantly, you yourself can run to become a delegate.

Another big reason to get involved this time is to hep decide who could run against Bennett for U.S. Senate. In April, only three GOP candidates out of the dozen or so who have announced they’re running will make it out of the state convention. That’s because a candidate needs to crack 30 percent of the delegate vote in order to get on the GOP primary ballot for U.S. Senate.

“You very much can have an impact whether you run for delegate or you elect delegates who support candidates that you like,” at the March 1 caucuses, says Lynch. “Your vote goes so much further in a caucus process simply by showing up.”

http://www.coloradoindependent.com/156936/colorado-republican-caucuses

 

[Mordan]

It was the responsibility of the Trump campaign to find their own local party leaders and activists to run for delegate. That's why well-organized campaigns have teams who go out and identify these people. If Trump was such a popular candidate, this would have not been a problem. Cruz is only slightly more popular than Trump and they had a full slate. Ron 2012 had plenty of people willing to give their time and money to work their way through the delegate process when other campaigns like Santorum were left hanging in the wind just like the Trump 2016 supporters.

you are a tool. Ron Paul had them in 2012 and achieved NOTHING. NADA. SLITCH.

Trump is doing so much more this year. I cannot thank him enough for FIGHTING and raising hell in the media.