ron paul=awesome/kickass?

[Dr. Love]

[Dr. Love]

Could Ron Paul Still Win Maine?
By NATE SILVER
Ron Paul’s campaign is claiming that it could still win the presidential preference poll in the Maine caucus because of a county that postponed its vote and will hold its caucus next Saturday, Feb. 18.

On Saturday, the Maine Republican Party declared Mitt Romney the winner of the presidential preference vote, which he led by 194 ballots based on the caucuses that have been held so far.

State Republicans said they considered the results of the straw poll final. However, Washington County, in the easternmost part of the state, postponed its caucus after a snowstorm was forecast there. The Washington County G.O.P. Chair, Chris Gardner, said his county would conduct the straw poll at its caucuses and will report the results to the state.

All if this will be moot unless Mr. Paul is able to make up 194 votes in the county.

Based on how the county voted in 2008, that seems unlikely. Just 113 votes total were cast in the county in 2008, and only 8 of those were for Mr. Paul. John McCain, instead, won the plurality.

In addition, Mr. Romney narrowly won the two counties, Hancock and Penobscot, that border Washington County to the west and which are probably the best demographic match for it — although Mr. Paul won sparsely-populated Aroostook County, which borders it to the north, where he took 81 votes to Mr. Romney’s 26.

However, Washington County might theoretically have some untapped potential for Mr. Paul. It is rural and relatively poor — demographics that tend to suit him more than Mr. Romney. And it is relatively conservative, having split its vote about evenly between Barack Obama and Mr. McCain in 2008 when Mr. Obama won Maine as a whole fairly easily.

What such an outcome would require is for Mr. Paul’s campaign to make a concerted effort to turn out any supporters it has in the area. There are 6,907 registered Republicans in Washington County, and another 8,247 unaffiliated registered voters, who are eligible to participate by changing their registration to Republican at the caucus site. Unregistered voters, for that matter, are also free to participate provided that they register at the caucus site.

Imagine, for instance, that voters turned out in the county at a rate comparable the Iowa caucuses, where Mr. Paul had a strong turnout operation. In Iowa, 122,255 Republicans participated in the caucuses as compared to a total of 644,220 voters who were registered as Republican prior to caucus night.

Were turnout in Washington County to occur at the Iowa rate, it would produce about 1,300 participants at the caucuses, enough to swing the outcome if Mr. Paul received about 15 percent more of their votes than Mr. Romney.

A more likely scenario, perhaps, is that Mr. Paul would work to turn out his supporters while the other campaigns would not. Mr. Romney’s campaign, in particular, might seem to give credence to the notion that the straw poll was an unresolved issue if it made extra effort to turn out voters there.

If Mr. Paul were somehow to secure the 194-vote margin, that would create a messy scenario for the Maine G.O.P. It would either need to backtrack on its previous statements that the straw poll results are final, or might risk appearing as though it was disenfranchising voters.

Such a result would also create problems of interpretation. Under this scenario, turnout would be much higher in Washington County than in other parts of Maine — and it would be higher in part because the results from the rest of the state were already known and Mr. Paul had doubled-down in the county as a result.

Put differently, it’s possible that Mr. Paul would receive enough votes there to swing the outcome, but would not have done so if the caucus had taken place as originally scheduled.

A handful of Maine towns outside of Washington County have also not yet held caucuses. In those cases, however, the caucuses were scheduled for after Feb. 11 all along. Only 45 votes were cast in these towns in 2008, so any impact is likely to be small.

The results of the presidential preference poll are nonbinding and serve mostly for vanity — delegates are selected through a separate vote at the caucus sites. Although this is also true in most other Republican caucus states, Maine’s delegate selection process is especially cumbersome and can potentially reward candidates whose supporters are more enthusiastic and who sit through the entire process, which can be hours long.

Mr. Paul’s campaign has predicted that it will win the most delegates from Maine regardless of the result of the straw poll.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/could-ron-paul-still-win-maine/

[Satan]

I'm a disenchanted Demoncrat, but not delusional enough to turn America over to an Ayn Rand cultist.

[Dr. Love]

Maine caucuses provide a window into Ron Paul delegate strategy
By Felicia Sonmez

Mary Keene, a Ron Paul supporter from Portland, fills out her Maine state delegate ballot at Saturday’s GOP caucuses. (Felicia Sonmez/ The Washington Post) Republican caucus-goers at the Riverton Elementary School cafetorium had wrapped up voting in their presidential straw poll, and a second – and, some would argue, even more important – step in the nominating process was beginning: the selection of some 73 delegates from the Portland area to the state convention in Augusta in May.

By the time this part of the process rolled around, two hours after the caucuses had begun, nearly half of the Portland caucus-goers had emptied out of the school, having already cast their ballots in the straw poll.

Mitt Romney had come, made his pitch to voters, and gone. His volunteers had packed up and moved on. And the dozens of reporters and TV crews that had descended on the school earlier in the morning were nowhere to be found.

It was then that the Freedom Lists – as well as the somewhat less-mysteriously named “Conservative Republican Lists,” both pre-printed sheets of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) supporters – began making the rounds.

Estimates by CNN and other national news organizations Saturday night projected that Romney, who placed first with 39 percent in the Maine GOP straw poll, would wind up taking at least nine of Maine’s 24 national convention delegates, compared with seven for Paul, who placed second with 36 percent.

But due to Paul supporters’ superior organization in the low-turnout caucuses, those projections could be way off, and the libertarian-leaning Texas congressman could well sweep Maine’s 24 delegates at the August Republican National Convention.

Paul’s campaign is eyeing caucus states like Maine that have been bypassed by some of the other GOP presidential contenders. (Felicia Sonmez/ The Washington Post)The Paul camp’s strategy is one that bears similarities to then-Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) focus on smaller caucus states four years ago. During the 2008 campaign, Obama was able to best then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in the delegate race in part by running up large margins in low-turnout caucus states – contests that the Clinton camp had largely bypassed in favor of focusing its resources on bigger, delegate-rich states.

Since Democratic delegates were awarded proportionally, however, a narrow victory in a big state wasn’t worth nearly as much as a wide victory in a small one, a factor that the Obama camp used to its advantage.

This time around, the GOP frontrunner, Romney, has generally focused on the bigger races, while Paul’s camp has been throwing its effort into caucus states. But unlike in the Democratic contest four years ago, some caucus states in the current GOP race award delegates in a process that’s completely separate from the presidential preference poll.

That means that a candidate could in theory win the caucus-night straw poll – as Romney did on Saturday – but lose the battle for the state’s delegates.

Doing so would mean having been massively out-organized by a rival candidate’s operation. And that’s just what appeared to happen to Romney’s camp at the Riverton School on Saturday.

Mainers at Portland’s GOP municipal caucus Saturday afternoon. (Felicia Sonmez/The Washington Post)At the Portland caucuses Saturday, the first step for succeeding in the state delegate race was ensuring that the contest would take place as a sort of caucus-within-a-caucus.

“The delegate race (matters more), for sure,” said Alex Lyscars, a 21-year-old student and Paul supporter from Portland. “I mean, I don’t really care about the straw poll as long as the delegates are representative of what’s going on. (Paul) can win straw polls anywhere he wants, but if he’s not getting the delegates, it doesn’t really matter.”

Lyscars was among the scores of Paul supporters who lingered at Saturday’s caucuses well after the straw poll in order to cast ballots in the state delegate race.

On this snowy Saturday afternoon, about 260 people had showed up for the GOP caucuses in Portland – up from about 200 four years ago, according to Steven Scharf, secretary of the Portland City Republican Committee.

Of them, about 145 had signed up to run for the 73 state delegate spots – a marked uptick from the 89 or so who had signed up four years ago, Scharf said.

According to the original caucus-day order of business, the state delegate vote had been scheduled to take place first, followed by the presidential straw poll.

But just as the vote was about to get underway, Jonathan Pfaff, a 31-year-old software engineer and member of the Portland City Republican Committee, raised his hand, stood up and motioned to reverse the order of business. After a few minutes of debate, the motion was seconded, and a wide majority of the assembled voters agreed.

Since many attendees planned to head home after the straw poll, the flip meant that rather than taking place among the full 260 caucus-goers, the state delegate race would be conducted with only about half that many people in the room.

And that meant the pool had effectively been reduced to only the most committed voters of an already quite diehard bunch – among them, many Paul supporters like Lyscars who were willing to spend more than four hours at a caucus on a Saturday afternoon and for whom the straw poll results were secondary to the actual delegate race.

In an interview, Pfaff, who participated in the caucus until the end, declined to say which candidate he supported but observed that the majority of caucus-goers agreed with him that reversing the order of business was a good idea.

“That was important because as you can see — how long this process is taking — there are a lot of people that aren’t going to have time to go to the convention, right?” he said. “They don’t know very many people or whatever. And it’s snowing outside. They just want to make sure to make their preference poll known, and they wanted to go home. So, I wanted to give them the opportunity. And they agreed with me, right? You saw it. Ninety-nine percent of people agreed with me that that was the right thing to do.”

Asked whether he personally believed the state delegate race was more important than the straw poll vote, Pfaff declined to say.

“As you well know, the media will be reporting the straw poll, and the delegates will be going to vote for their preference at the convention,” he said. “So whatever’s important to the campaign is what they want to have happen.”

Jean Carbonneau, a 50-year-old post office worker who caucused at Riverton Elementary School and had been vying for a spot as a delegate for Paul, said in an interview later Saturday at Paul’s caucus-night party that the delegate race was “absolutely” the most important part of the process.

“You’ve got to understand, with the straw poll, most people show up to these caucuses just for that, and then after that’s conducted, they go home,” he said. “It’s only a few the people that stay around for the actual most important part. And I know, speaking for myself in Portland, the majority of the people that stuck around were Ron Paul supporters.”

A Portland caucus-goer checks his state delegate ballot against a “Freedom List.” (Felicia Sonmez/ The Washington Post)The second step in securing a state delegate win called for maximizing the number of votes cast for delegates who would go on to support Paul.

It was at this stage that it became clear Paul supporters had a strategy in place – and that the Romney camp, apparently, had none.

How do about 145 people in a room decide which 73 of them will go on to become delegates?

If you’re at the Portland Republican caucuses, the process involves paper ballots with 145 names on them -- printed by the party onsite -- on which participants must individually circle their top 73 choices.

Once the ballots were printed, candidates for state delegate were each given 10 seconds to stand in front of the crowd and make their pitch. About four-dozen of the delegate candidates formed a line that snaked around the room, waiting their turn to speak.

One after another, the Paul supporters took the microphone.

“I’m a nine-year Navy veteran. Served on submarines. And like all veterans, I support Ron Paul.”

“I make sure you get your junk mail every day. And I support Ron Paul.”

“Having read the Constitution – Ron Paul.”

“I’d like to say, it’s immigrants, not aliens. And it’s national health care, not Obamacare. And I vote for Ron Paul.”

Of the 50 or so speakers, only a handful spoke out in support of candidates other than Paul.

Then, the balloting began – and the Freedom Lists made their appearance.

The lists (along with the Conservative Republican Lists) were pre-printed sheets that Paul supporters appeared to have brought to the caucus. Most of the sheets had about three-dozen names printed on them in alphabetical order, with another few dozen handwritten below.

It wasn’t clear who had made the lists, and few caucus-goers were willing to field questions about them. But for the next hour or so, Paul supporters gathered throughout the cafetorium, seated in groups and standing around the long tables near the doors, circling the names on their ballots corresponding with those on the lists. It was a lively scene, with caucus-goers talking loudly and some Paul backers making the rounds to make sure that other supporters filled out their ballots correctly.

While the Paul camp was clearly organizing together, the Romney team had no visible get-out-the-vote operation in place.

Mary Keene, a 54-year-old certified residential medication aide, was sitting down with a large Ron Paul sign in her lap as she circled names from one of the Freedom Lists on her own ballot.

A Paul supporter who herself had run for a delegate spot, Keene said she believed the delegate race was unquestionably more important than the straw poll.

“Well, it has something to do with the college of electorals,” she said of the process. “I don’t believe in it. I don’t like it. But that’s the way it is.”

Signs for Ron Paul and Mitt Romney outside the Portland caucus site. (Felicia Sonmez — The Washington Post)If Paul comes out ahead in the Maine delegate count, it will be in no small part due to the enthusiasm of his supporters and their mastery of the technical ins and outs of a little-understood and often-overlooked part of the electoral process.

But as Saturday’s Portland caucuses revealed, that process can cut both ways.

Party officials announced at the end of the Riverton Elementary School caucus that there had been a discrepancy in the final tally of state delegate ballots, and that they had received 19 more ballot sheets than they had the green index cards that voters turned in when they took their ballots.

That meant that the results of Portland’s state delegate race – at least, for the time being – were void.

“It was tossed,” Carbonneau, the post office worker, said at Paul’s caucus-night party. “It was voided. The whole thing.”

He said that some at the caucus had floated the idea of appealing to the state GOP on the matter, while others suggested mailing out ballots to those who had attended, to be returned ahead of the state convention in May. For now, though, the results – as well as Paul’s fortunes -- are in limbo.

“It’s just frustrating,” Carbonneau said. “I mean, some people were there for five, six hours. And it was all tossed out.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/post/maine-caucuses-provide-a-window-into-ron-paul-delegate-strategy/2012/02/12/gIQARNbC9Q_blog.html?wprss=election-2012

[Dr. Love]

Ron Paul Campaign: Establishment hiding Maine Caucus results

The Ron Paul campaign came forward Saturday claiming the establishment is purposely hiding Maine’s overall caucus results and delegate totals from the American people to prevent any potential surge or momentum from taking place as a result of the success he had in the caucus.

In what has turned out to be a true info-war, the “mainstream” establishment media is claiming one thing, while the Ron Paul campaign and his supporters are saying quite another.

This time, however, the battleground of ideas has spread to the Maine Caucus, with the prize being the perception that the American people have about who won and who deserves the momentum from winning the state, going forward.

As is stands, “official” totals read Romney barely “winning” the caucus, according to the establishment’s media, by a very slim margin of less than 200 votes, despite the fact that the caucus has yet to officially conclude, with 16.3% of the precincts yet to report, according to Google Politics.

Interestingly however, state-run media decided to declare Mitt Romney the winner, giving their ultra-pro-status-quo golden boy all the glitz and glamour of a huge, momentum regaining “comeback win,” showcasing the alleged victory even though state GOP ‘officials’ decided to curiously delay the final count in Washington County for another week because of a “potential snow storm.”

In an email, Ron Paul 2012 Campaign Manager, John Tate said GOP officials are so frightened by the actual success the Ron Paul 2012 campaign is having, “The national political establishment and their pals in the national media will do ‘anything’ to silence our message of liberty,” he stated.

“You see, in Maine today,” he said, “you and I saw a perfect example of just how much the establishment fears Ron Paul. That’s right. A prediction of 3-4 inches – that turned into nothing more than a dusting - was enough for a local GOP official to postpone the caucuses just so the results wouldn’t be reported tonight.”

“This is Maine we’re talking about,” he said while scoffing at the idea they’d use snow as an excuse, “even the Girl Scouts had an event today in Washington County that wasn’t cancelled!”

The Ron Paul campaign called the situation an “outrage” and pointed out the fact that, of the unusually very low amount of press that was actually given to the caucus results, even MSNBC cut Ron Paul’s “post” caucus speech conveniently short, just as he was getting into explaining these very circumstances to a very excited crowd of supporters.

The Ron Paul campaign may not actually be overstating the circumstances. In Washington County, Ron Paul has been polling incredibly strong, and it seems the caucus was delayed until next week just so the votes wouldn’t be reported by the national media, so Ron wouldn’t get the momentum from the win.

“The truth is,” Tate’s email stated, “there is no length to which the GOP establishment won’t go. There is nothing the mainstream media won’t do, because I seriously think that just the votes of Washington County would have been enough to put us over the top.”

Now however, just as it has been reported in various other caucuses around the country during this election season, considering Iowa still has yet to report totals from 8 missing precincts, considering Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, and South Carolina have all had obvious signs of vote fraud, including the resignations of state party chairs from both Iowa and Nevada thus far, there truly is no telling now if we’ll even know what the actual vote totals from Maine and Washington County will ever be.

UPDATE: Politico (02/12/12): “In particular, a senior Paul aide had suggested that the Romney campaign was involved in the cancellation of Washington County’s caucuses, a small county where Paul’s campaign had expected to do well. “It’s not completely insidious, but they knew we were going to swamp it up there,” said Paul campaign chairman Jesse Benton.”

Sources:

Wall-Street Journal: Romney Wins Maine Caucuses http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...googlenews_wsj

Google Politics: Maine Caucus results http://www.google.com/elections/ed/us/results

MSNBC Cuts Off Ron Paul 4 Minutes Into His Maine 2012 Caucus Night Speech http://youtu.be/9Wpx2MZnvsk

Iowa vote fraud official http://www.examiner.com/conspiracy-i...fraud-official

Nevada vote fraud official http://www.examiner.com/conspiracy-i...fraud-official

http://www.examiner.com/conspiracy-in-denver/ron-paul-campaign-establishment-hiding-maine-caucus-results

[Dr. Love]

alternatively, we can just vote to keep things the same:

[Dr. Love]

or, something different

[Dr. Love]

what a coincidence! This interview was done the day BEFORE they decided to stop counting votes at 84% of the total and call it for Romney.

Maine GOP leader: It'll come down to 200 votes
By Jonathan Riskind jriskind@mainetoday.com

WASHINGTON - Maine Republican Party Chairman Charlie Webster said Friday that he doesn't know whether Mitt Romney will be declared the winner of the Maine caucuses' GOP presidential straw poll or suffer a setback to Ron Paul.

But Webster said he's pretty sure of two things: The race is close and the winner of the previously low-profile Maine caucuses will get a needed boost.

"What will happen is that either Paul or Romney will win by 200 votes, in my opinion, one way or the other," Webster said Friday, although he said he did not know the tally from the caucuses that have been held statewide.

Webster and independent analysts say Maine won't make or break Romney -- who lost the front-runner status he gained with wins in Florida and Nevada by losing Tuesday to Rick Santorum in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri.

But a win by Romney would help change a narrative that his campaign is struggling.

A win by Paul would show that the U.S. House member from Texas can actually come in first in a 2012 GOP contest, something he hasn't done. Paul spent two days in Maine last month, drawing large crowds, and is spending today in the state, visiting caucus sites in Sanford, Lewiston and New Gloucester and holding a party in Portland.

"I think it will be important to see what (Maine Republicans) think," Webster said. "I do think it is important to Romney and Paul that they do well here."

Romney easily won the Maine caucuses in 2008 over eventual GOP nominee John McCain and third-place finisher Paul.

Maine's nonbinding caucus event is the first step to select the state's 24 delegates to the Republican National Convention, although three slots go automatically to the Maine GOP chairman and two other party officials. Overall, 1,144 delegates are needed nationally to capture the GOP presidential nomination.

Santorum and Newt Gingrich haven't campaigned in Maine and aren't thought to be factors in the state's contest.

Christian Potholm, a government professor at Bowdoin College, said the Romney campaign may feel pressure to win in Maine. But a muddled GOP primary season won't become clearer until the 11-state round of Super Tuesday contests on March 6 and even beyond, he said.

"Winning in Maine won't do anything to change that dynamic," Potholm said.

Maine Democrats are reveling in a GOP nominating season that appears likely to stretch a long way, and suggesting that a Romney loss in Maine would be downright embarrassing because he won the state caucuses four years ago with more than 50 percent of the vote.

"(Romney) needs to at least equal that," said Janet Mills, vice chair of the Maine Democratic Party. "He is coming here with his tail between his legs. Morale-wise and from a momentum perspective, he absolutely needs to win Maine and he needs to win big."

The Romney campaign says it wants to win in Maine, but discounts the suggestion that any one state is vital.

"Gov. Romney is running a national campaign and competing in nominating contests across the country," Ryan Williams, a Romney campaign spokesman, said Friday. "We hope to do as well as possible on Saturday and look forward to securing the support needed to win the nomination and defeat President Obama in November."

http://www.pressherald.com/news/maine-gop-leader-winner-gets-boost_2012-02-11.html

[Nickdfresh]

or, something different

Is it really fair to characterize Obama as "WAR" in the same manner of those other fuckwits that want to "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" when he's pulled us out of Iraq and is winding down the Afghan war? And is seeking a diplomatic solution to the Iranian problem?

[Nitro Express]

Is it really fair to characterize Obama as "WAR" in the same manner of those other fuckwits that want to "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" when he's pulled us out of Iraq and is winding down the Afghan war? And is seeking a diplomatic solution to the Iranian problem?

The CIA is doing the bombing now instead of the main military. The CIA turned from an intelligence gathering agency to a fourth branch of the government. These predator drones spook me. They make bombing too easy and too unaccountable. I think the truth is presidents come and go but there are people who stay in Washington forever and they have access to money and secrecy and maybe the president just doesn't have a clue what's really going on. It very well could be Bush still controls parts of the CIA and is still running his agenda.

The thing with Obama, he's got a reputation for saying one thing and then renaging on what he said. He said the new defense bill was unconstitutional and would not sign it into law and then he did exactly that. He said he would have an open government and his administration has been one of the most secretive. He said he would close Gitmo but never did. I like to joke and say Barrack did open the government up, he showed us how corrupt it is. LOL!

[Dr. Love]

Obama only withdrew troops from Iraq because the Iraqis refused to let us stay any longer. He didn't do it because he wanted to. He also started operations in Libya and has escalated actions in Pakistan. Afghanistan, he is drawing troops down ... but then it is an election year, after all.

For someone who campaigned on ending the wars, I find Obama very disappointing.

[Dr. Love]

[Seshmeister]

CNN's Piers Morgan is interviewing Paul tonight at 9:00pm EST, check your local listings...

I wouldn't watch the cunt interviewing Dave Lee Roth.

[kwame k]

Obama only withdrew troops from Iraq because the Iraqis refused to let us stay any longer. He didn't do it because he wanted to. He also started operations in Libya and has escalated actions in Pakistan. Afghanistan, he is drawing troops down ... but then it is an election year, after all.

For someone who campaigned on ending the wars, I find Obama very disappointing.

Actually Bush couldn't get an extension past December 31, 2011 timetable....Obama's campaign promise was to bring them home before then.

Other than providing air support what operations do we have or had in Libya? Would you rather drop a few bombs and turn over all operations to the UN or let 1000's of people get slaughtered by their military?

We escalated actions in Pakistan because that's where the terraist were going.....by escalating, I'm mean drone attacks and special op missions. Did we occupy Pakistan or did we finally use a common sense approach to the problem?

Pretty thin, Doc...pretty thin.

[Dr. Love]

Actually Bush couldn't get an extension past December 31, 2011 timetable....Obama's campaign promise was to bring them home before then.

As I recall it, Obama asked for an extension and only announced troop withdrawal after the Iraqis said 'no'.

Other than providing air support what operations do we have or had in Libya? Would you rather drop a few bombs and turn over all operations to the UN or let 1000's of people get slaughtered by their military?

Why were we involved at all? How about letting the other nations in the world spend their money taking out regimes they don't like?

We escalated actions in Pakistan because that's where the terraist were going.....by escalating, I'm mean drone attacks and special op missions. Did we occupy Pakistan or did we finally use a common sense approach to the problem?

Good point. I'll keep that in mind if some other country decides to start striking inside the United States against people that they feel threatened by.

Pretty thin, Doc...pretty thin.

I forgot to mention ... didn't Obama campaign on closing Guantanamo? How'd that go again?

Or how about signing the NDAA and giving the military the authority to detain American citizens indefinitely? Or wait, what about authorizing the assassination of American citizens?