Lots of folk have had lots to say about Ron Paul’s slow racking
up of delegates and supporter influence in the Republican Party in
the past couple of days. A sampling:

*Jon Ward at
Huffington Post says some Iowan GOPers are peeved
and distressed at the Paulian success in their state:

Conversations with numerous Iowa Republicans confirms the same
thing: The state party establishment is dreading a Paul rout on
June 15 and 16 at the two-day congressional district/state
convention in Des Moines.

“Paul is costing the state a lot of credibility,” said Bob Haus,
a GOP consultant who most recently headed up Texas Gov. Rick
Perry’s campaign in the state.  

Another Republican operative who works for a statewide official
sounded an even more despondent note.

“It does not sound encouraging. The Paul people are in a
position to control the delegates, and the result would be chaotic
for the Republican Party of Iowa and bring it to a screeching halt,
rendering it completely irrelevant to our efforts here,” the
Republican aide told The Huffington Post. “Nobody would rely on
[the state party] for anything.

After the fiasco earlier this year involving the caucus results,
Iowans are nervous that if Paul gets a majority of the delegates,
it will endanger their first-in-the-nation primary
status. 

After a decent summation of where and how the Paul people are
punching above their weight in other states such as Minnesota,
Alaska, Colorado, and Nevada, Ward wonders: to what avail?

Despite the drama, it’s still not clear what immediate tangible
benefit these delegates will yield for Paul and his devoted
followers. Romney still appears to be set to reach 1,144 delegates,
the number he needs to clinch the nomination.

But at the very least, Paul’s delegate total and the willingness
of his supporters to vote for him on the floor in Tampa is certain
to draw attention to his cause and his message of limited
government. It seems somewhat unlikely that Paul would forego the
chance to see his supporters give the GOP establishment fits on the
convention floor, under a nationally televised microscope, simply
to gain a better speaking slot at the four-day event.

So he may be simply building a movement with a view toward
giving his son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a head start for the 2016
race.

And some Republicans said he has already succeeded in pushing
the Republican Party so far to the right on fiscal and budgetary
matters that it has paid tangible dividends at the legislative
level.

“There are a lot of establishment Republicans who need to thank
Ron Paul for injecting a certain amount of courage to do what
people always said needed to be done but where they also said, ‘How
do we do that?'” Iowa state Rep. Erik Helland said.

*Fox News calls the Paul strategy a
“highjacking” of the Party and quotes a GOP strategist saying
it will only in the end (for reasons unexplained) help Obama.
 

*The Hill pushes the same “Paul’s state level victories
might help Obama” line, with some
actual explanations of how that might be the case:

State Republican Party organizations are usually responsible for
get out the vote efforts and other functions key to a successful
election. If officials aren’t in Romney’s corner, the former
Massachusetts governor and down-ticket Republicans could struggle
due to weak voter registration efforts.

The story goes on to detail some bad blood between the very
Paulite new establishment running the Iowa GOP and Romney folk,
based not only in Paul fandom but in Romney’s steadfast ignoring of
the state in the early days of the campaign.

*I
blogged yesterday about a lawyer for the national GOP warning
Nevada that it better do what the popular caucus vote said and
nominate a majority of Romney delegates. The Associated Press

reports on the response from the chair of Paul’s campaign in
Nevada:

The Nevada chairman of Ron Paul’s presidential campaign…Carl
Bunce called the RNC opinion “creative writing” and maintained Paul
supporters will abide by rules that first-round balloting at the
national convention be apportioned based on the outcome of the
Nevada caucuses….

Bunce countered that rules adopted by the state party last fall
and forwarded to the RNC say that delegates are elected at the
state convention, but the allotment of delegates to particular
candidates happens afterward.

“If Romney’s the guy, what are they worried about?” he said.
“It’s obvious to those of us in the Ron Paul campaign … Romney
did not have the delegates or the force to get his delegates to the
national convention.”….

Bunce predicted the 50 percent to 60 percent of state convention
attendees will be Paul backers.

“It’s going to be a Ron Paul rally, that’s what it’s going to
be,” he said, adding, “It will be a lawyer fest, probably.”

The Nevada GOP establishment shut down their own
convention to avoid a Paul delegate victory back in 2008.

*Independent Voter Network thinks that
what is most important coming out of the GOP primary season is
that “Ron Paul has built a political machine. Judging by
recent events in state and local GOP conventions across the
country, it may not be at all presumptuous for Ron Paul’s
supporters to call their burgeoning movement a revolution.”

*Talking Points Memo thinks that “Ron
Paul Supporters Antics Could Spell Trouble for GOP
Convention.”

*Thomas Mullen writing at a Washington Times
“communities” page thinks the
Paul strategy is perfectly legitimate, indeed a great hat tip
to our traditions as a Republic-not-a-democracy:

Ron Paul’s strategy takes advantage of the republican nature of
the nomination process. That process does not rely purely on a
popular vote to determine who will be the nominee. Instead, voters
must go through a multi-tiered vetting process of successive
elections in order to become a delegate to the RNC.  

This does not remove all of the dangers inherent in a pure
democracy, but it helps. At least a delegate has been forced to
hear the arguments of other candidates before blindly casting a
vote. He also must have the commitment necessary to endure the long
delegate selection process.   

That the process is republican rather than democratic does not
disenfranchise anyone. Everyone has an equal opportunity to become
a delegate. Everyone has an equal opportunity to read the rules.
That supporters of some candidates choose not to go through the
process does not “nullify their wishes.” That they choose not to
become informed on how candidates are actually nominated does not
represent a deception. On the contrary, the whole process is
intentionally designed to ensure that uninformed or uncommitted
people do not directly choose the nominee.

*TV journalist Ben Swann from a Fox affiliate in Cincinnati
thinks
the RNC is violating its own rules by already behaving as if
Romney won and supporting him; he also wonders if his reading of
RNC “rule 38” means that delegates thought bound to the winner of
state caucuses and primaries might not be after all; writers at the
Daily Paul say
he’s wrong.

*At the College Fix, former Reason intern
Julie Ershadi checks in with the latest of Paul’s
multi-thousand college campus appearences, at Cal State
Fullerton, where he talks up civil liberties and fears government
surveillance of us all.

*Robin Koerner at Huffington Post sees a
media confused by the paradigm shift the Ron Paul revolution
portends.

*As you might know, I have a book coming out within a couple of
weeks called
Ron Paul’s Revolution: The Man and the Movement He
Inspired, and it got a very nice
write-up at RealClearBooks by W. James Antle III, a journalist
with a great deal of experience writing and thinking about the
modern American right.