Analysis: Romney, Paul camps form alliance in Mo.

Monday, March 19, 2012

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Supporters of Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Ron Paul have forged an alliance in some of Missouri's local caucuses.

Rick Santorum easily won Missouri's non-binding primary last month. But he was shut out from receiving delegates at some of the local caucuses that occurred over the weekend after Romney and Paul supporters combined to advance their own slate of delegates.

Missouri's local caucuses are being used to select 2,123 delegates to advance to regional Republican conventions April 21 and the state convention June 2.

It's at those later meetings that delegates actually will be bound to support particular presidential candidates. That means Santorum still could emerge with most of Missouri's delegates. But that could be made more difficult if supporters of Romney and Paul stick to their alliance.

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Graceful 1 year, 2 months ago

The Cole County caucus was a prime example of thug politics. Those that were involved should be ashamed of themselves. Repuiblicans are supposed to be better than that.

tonto_goldberg 1 year, 2 months ago

We get it. Your candidate did not win this round. If you want someone besides Romney to get nominated, you need to be more active less whiny. The campaign is nowhere near over. You can't just show up with placards, enthusiasm, and wishful thinking like it was a Tea Party rally.

I once showed up at an "organizing" meeting for a local political party. By "organizing", they meant they were looking for volunteers to stuff envelopes.

JCLifer 1 year, 2 months ago

Sounds like Jefferson City elite good ol boys in action. Sadly, Obama is gonna get reelected because the republicans are so whacked.

tonto_goldberg 1 year, 2 months ago

You didn't do your homework. That's all there is to understand.

malmo 1 year, 2 months ago

Thugs are always on the other side........ If your candidate had garnered more votes, you would think the process was fine and dandy.

JCLifer 1 year, 2 months ago

His base is.a.bunch of dead voters.and illegal invaders.

asb 1 year, 2 months ago

Grace I've experienced local political "club" control of the caucus process a few times, sorry you had to smell it. There is a solution. You get on the phone, call people until you're hoarse, show up with more people than the club can control, and take that slate. Then, at districts the regional club will mix and dilute the delegates you "stole" from them, unless you have enough local township slates to end up with some of you getting to the state level confab, where Blunt's mob will liquor your folks up, hang 'em over, and completely bamboozle them out of any real representation during the main votes. However, if your delegates are legion enough to survive the preliminaries, you'll still be spectators at the national convention, where money and ancient politics will decide who will run next fall. This process is not new to America. It is a primary human trait, so quit blaming the left, it's Democracy, work it.

tonto_goldberg 1 year, 2 months ago

Your last comment is right on the money, but the process you suggested earlier would not have worked in this case. The same issues came up all over the state. The pros had things set up in advance and kept the caucuses under control. If you had read a few more newspapers you would have heard about similar complaints lodged against the organizers of many of the weekend Missouri GOP caucuses. Some were shut down with police assistance.

The "problem" was a number of people like Graceful who actually believed they were the "real" GOP and that they would be picking the delegates in some sort of an open and "elementary school fair" type of election.

John 1 year, 2 months ago

It is interesting that you consider that Grace hates her country because she is an advocate for rebellion. Ever read the writing of Thomas Jefferson and some of the other founders? Have you ever read their views on taxation and revolution? Ever read their views (you know the guys who actually wrote those things) on the Second Amendment?

Sequoia 1 year, 2 months ago

Don't forget, the Founders were concerned about taxation WITHOUT REPRESENTATION. They weren't rebelling because they were taxed. They rebelled because they weren't represented in the body that taxed them.

The "without representation" part seems to get forgotten a lot, doesn't it?

tonto_goldberg 1 year, 2 months ago

I have read that stuff. It's a large body of work but not overwhelming. These arguments become like arguments about religion - people like to find words that seem to support what they wanted to believe.

If you read what the founders of this nation wrote in direct response to a given topic, we are still on the right track. It's when you go out and try to apply tangential writing to current situations that you come away with the "we're dong it all wrong" theories.

asb 1 year, 2 months ago

Yes, Jefferson and others wrote that rebellion was needed on a regular basis. Imagine, rebels saying rebellion was a good idea! However, if you read the philosophy and literature of the time, on which they based much of their rationale for OUR rebellion, there was little stomach for bloodshed for the sake of novelty. The whole idea of a sound, tri-partite, government was to eliminate the need for dying for cause. The secessionists dug up the same language, with horrible effect. Jefferson was wrong, on this and other issues. A sound representitive democracy doesn't need generational blood, only participation by all wanting a stake, and hanging of a few corrupt politicians now and then. And, with capital punishment out-of-vogue, even that has turned into book deals and reality TV. Sorry, Grace is but a pamphlet waving paranoid convinced that we're in hell and that only armowhatsit will do.

tonto_goldberg 1 year, 2 months ago

You might have done better at a Democrat party caucus, since they are a lot less organized than the GOP. You do not get to walk into a meeting and tell a successful organization how to run things. The GOP runs their organization the way their leadership set it up, and it will change as they need it to change. Sometimes they change leadership after they lose an election but not in the runup to a big election.

What you are telling us is that the whole world is going to hell because you didn't get your way last weekend.

asb 1 year, 2 months ago

The system is working just fine Grace, you don't have to fear. Your sedition, as defined by relevant laws, lacks the one element needed for prosecution, let alone conviction; a consistant rational structure. You're only guilty of fear and the hate that fear becomes when inflamed by propaganda. You want your country back, the one that's been taken by the forces of godless evil presently sitting in the Whitehouse. There are enough of you to win a Teaparty surge, but not nearly enough of you to survive the multi-level political playoffs going on now for God's Own Party. Don't cry, organize.

tonto_goldberg 1 year, 2 months ago

You have the fire in the belly, so maybe you should try to do more than post verbal tantrums on a small-town newspaper comment column. If you want to be taken seriously, you will learn how the GOP caucus system works. You would then organize enough people who believe as you do to outnumber and encircle the good-old-boy types at the next level. At that point you would be in a position to make a deal with them for openness.

asb 1 year, 2 months ago

I think Graceful's point is that there's no point in the process. Only the gun will do now. This is a shame, because the process, while disgusting at times, does indeed work. The extreme frightened Right was able to flood state and federal legislature with their uncompromising minions through intense public campaigns of "take back America" but the Presidential process is more buffered by time, influence and internal politics, but it still does work. Even when the popular vote is altered through massive fraud like happened in Florida in 2000, there's always that anti-constitutional Supreme Court there to say "whatever, George is President, everybody go home." As long as Grace doesn't actually DO anything, or say too many actually seditious things, we're safe, and so is Grace.

tonto_goldberg 1 year, 2 months ago

People have remembered the Florida vote in 2000 but they have forgotten Ohio and New Mexico.

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