Ron Paul Wins Iowa, the World Reacts
As I noted over the weekend, the actual process by which
delegates are selected in the Iowa caucus process (misunderstood
completely by the media, including the Associated Press and New
York Times which had been issuing authoritative and totally
wrong “official delegate counts” about Iowa for months–and
still
are today!) is over, and
Ron Paul won–alas, a bit late for that campaign-season
momentum boost.
Here’s some reportorial and pundit reaction. First, Seema Mehta
at the Los Angeles Times on
what Paul’s Iowa victory, and similar victories elsewhere,
might mean in Tampa. Maybe….chaos!:
“We want to influence the direction of the party more than
anything else,” said Joel Kurtinitis, who was Paul’s state director
in Iowa until the congressman effectively ended his presidential
bid in May. He said efforts by followers of Paul, a 76-year-old who
will retire when his current term ends, are about more than him or
his son Rand, a senator from Kentucky.
“We’re going to hold up our values and we’re going to bring
conservatism back to the mainline of the Republican Party,”
Kurtinitis said.But others say the move by the Iowa GOP is a black eye for the
state’s first-in-the-nation voting status and for Romney.“Embarrassment is the word that comes to my mind,” said Jamie
Johnson, who served as Santorum’s state coalitions director in
Iowa. The former Pennsylvania senator, who endorsed Romney after
ending his presidential bid in April, appears to have a solitary
Iowa delegate heading into the convention…..“Where their leverage is going to be is in how smoothly the
convention plays out. They hold the wild card. They can delay
events taking place in Tampa with parliamentary procedure,” said
Josh Putnam, a professor at Davidson College in North Carolina who
has studied political conventions.He said it would be a mistake to assume the Paul delegates are
monolithic. Some are focused on long-term goals of remaking the
GOP, but others are focused on creating instant change, such as
trying to block Romney’s nomination.“Romney’s going to be the nominee,” Putnam
You can read the rest of this article at: http://reason.com/blog/2012/06/18/ron-paul-wins-iowa-the-world-reacts
Short URL: http://www.txwclp.org/?p=11473
Posted by rbutler on Jun 18 2012. Filed under Libertarian News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
