A national Republican committee decided to reject Maine’s delegates to this week’s Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., but it is not the entity toward which Republicans should direct their anger. The responsibility lies with Maine’s GOP party leadership.
The RNC’s credentialing committee on Friday rejected Maine delegates supporting Texas Rep. Ron Paul — who is a long shot compared with Mitt Romney for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination — because of substantial problems at the Maine Republican Convention in May. It instead offered a compromise to seat 10 Paul supporters and 10 Romney supporters.
Romney backers can’t be blamed for originally challenging the validity of procedures at the state convention, and Paul activists and libertarians are understandably upset about not being seated. But neither side should place blame on the RNC Committee on Contests.
“On Saturday, May 5, 2012 at 9:51 a.m., Maine Republican Party Chairman Charlie Webster called the state convention to order … This is the last point that there was order in the state convention,” the committee’s report reads. Its analysis states: “The convention was riddled with serious credentialing, ballot and floor security issues” that affected the election of delegates.
Maine Republican Party leaders did not cause the disorder at the convention, but they could have been better prepared for it. This is a fact even Republican Party Chairman Charlie Webster acknowledges, to his credit.
“We did a terrible job of running the convention, and I’m willing to take the blame. There were a lot of mistakes made,” he said. He suggested improvements, such as cutting off registration days before the convention to ensure time to get through the credentialing process.
Paul supporters have said the national committee was spurred by politics, not facts, when it decided not to seat all the Paul delegates. Their wariness may be understandable, but it’s hard to refute the evidence that the convention’s rules of order were broken. By not following procedure, the election of delegates lost its integrity.
The Maine Republican Party should learn from mistakes at this year’s state convention. Whether you’re conservative, libertarian or moderate, you benefit from having your party follow the rules when electing delegates.
When your party doesn’t follow the rules, it’s the party that is responsible. The national GOP committee may have made the decision about not seating Paul supporters, but it was only reacting to what happened in Maine.
So what is this type of chaos happened in every state? Uncertain delegates, politics played at state GOP conventions. Do you thin Reince and Romney would care then? This article is a bunch of garbage.
Similar happenings occurred in other states, besides Maine. I vote Republican, or I used to vote Republican. The RNC is a mafia.
The Maine GOP is simply the lapdog of the RNC. They did their bidding at the caucus, shutting out Aroostook county due to “weather”. Then when the Paul delegates beat them at their own game at the state convention, the GOP tries to change the rules. The GOP has no interest in representing the people, they are representing the monied interested that fund them.
I think they want to be their lapdog, but they’re not very good at it. To make it worse, all those pesky rank-and-file Rs–with their opinions and the votes–get in the way.
The national GOP is every bit as much to blame as the Maine GOP. Their cheating and denigration of Dr. Paul is rife throughout the country, and the whole planet sees it.
the dems cheated back in 08,
both parties are corrupt.
why not vote for someone other than the “lesser of two evils”
like ron paul.
“The Dems cheated in 08.” is delusional nonsense with no basis in reality. But then again, what else is new when it comes to the right wing which has lost ALL sense of reality. And you’ll be whining again in November when the TeaPublican radicals get CRUSHED. People have had enough of the GOP lunacy.
so, about all those dead people that managed to get out of the grave to vote for the democratic messiah, or the new black panthers….?
I have to tell you that one rainy Saturday afternoon in 2008 I watched(C-Span) as the DNC met to deal with the early voting fiasco of theFlorida and Michigan primaries. As a supporter of Hillary Clinton I watched as the “committee” reached into the ballot boxes of those two states in which citizens duly voted for THEIR candidate and took votes cast for Hillary Clinton and gave them to Barack Obama. Lunacy ….I think there is plenty to go around.
This report is not accurate about the Maine convention. Charlie Webster expected to begin the convention and have it solidified with his hammering, and did not even want to wait for all of the delegates to get inside the building before doing so.
The only illegality going on from what one could observe, is that those in R “leadership” tried to confuse the voters by passing out false ballots, and that is a fact–it was not the Ron Paul supporters who caused the delays. They were following the rules and once again, anyone who was observant could see that was so.
“To his credit,” Charlie Webster acknowledges the fact that the high mucky mucks of the Maine Grumpy Old Party did not have their act together. To his credit, Lord Webster ought have fallen on his sword.
And this is the party that claims the state needs to fix its voting procedures? Just another example of “if we don’t get the vote we want,we’ll fix it” mentality that some have exhibited since Hanging Chad in Florida. Oh yes, don ‘t forget to demonize anyone who doesn’t agree with you. They must be un-American! or Commies, or Pink-O’s, or such.
The Romney campaign has choosen to forget getting votes from serior citizens, students, and minorities and is therefore concentrating on white, male conservative voters. That’s why their platform is anti-women, anti-black, and anti-immigrant. The last campaign that emphasized “culture”, “welfare”, and suppressing the minority vote was the Dixiecrats of 1948. Since the Romney-Ryan campaign has no solutions for any of our problems – promising a return to the gold standard i.e. a return to great depressions, criminalization of contrceptives and abortion, and restrictions on innovation by curtailing immigration while making permanent the Bush tax cuts and added huge new tax cuts for the wealthy and huge tax and fee increases for workers, their strategy is not surprising. What will be surprising is if working people will allow themselves to be conned by these professional con artists.
I won’t vote for any R’s this time around. They are all too shady. I hope we can clean up the party next time around and put some of those old farts out to pasture.
so you’re going to go vote for the “lesser of two evils”?
going to go vote democrat?
why not vote for a third party?
it doesn’t matter.
the political system is screwed up, corrupt, and controlled.
your vote doesn’t count. the voice and will of the people mean nothing to the people that truly control the system.
Mitt romney will win the election.
Why?
because he has the biggest financial corporations backing him.
same thing with obama, backed by the big wall street firms that ended up being bailed out by taxpayer money
and finally, it doesn’t matter who is elected, they both take our freedoms, sell us out, and destroy this country a little more each time. democrat or republican, they’re 2 sides of the same coin. the fake 2 party system that keeps america divided.
don’t buy into it,
Ben Swann did an interview with Romney yesterday (on you tub e) and Mitt Romney claims to have no knowledge of the stripping of Maine’s delegates. That was an outright lie since Romney’s top lawyer was involved. Romney has no problem lying. I’ll never vote for him.
During meetings last Friday, the Republican Rules Committee surprised a lot of people by changing the way delegates are selected. Under the new system, the GOP’s presidential nominees would have the power to override state parties and pick their own delegates. Essentially, the local party would have to surrender its authority to the candidate in naming representatives–even if the delegates are legally elected.
So you see, this is the way the game is played, if you make the rules you can win the game.
It’s not so much about the will of the single voter, as it is about the winner getting his way at the national convention.
And to think I’ve seen op-eds that ask if the conventions are relevant, WOW!
It is very simple; the RNC is corrupt.
Utter nonsense. Obviously nobody writing this editorial actually attended the convention. Credentialing was extra strict because the establishment GOPers wanted to weed out Paul supporters. Once Paul supporters showed themselves to be better organized and had a legitimate majority, it was the Romney lawyer Ben Ginsberg who initiated a series of objections and obstructionism to throw roadblocks before the orderly business of electing delegates. If anyone made a mistake is was the convention chair who should have had security eject Ginsberg and his team of Massachusetts lawyers who had no business on the convention floor in the first place.
“When your party doesn’t follow the rules, it’s the party that is responsible”
Good Point. The entire National Party should own up and unseat all of the Nations delegates. That would be the honorable thing to do, but we know this has nothing to do with honor, only money and power
Cant wait to hear Gov Chris Christie speak….
No sugar coating it that is for sure…..
He is full of himself and he disrespects his constituents. He is also progressive in more ways than not.
This is the stupidest article I have ever read!
Truth hurts, doesn’t it.
The convention was run in accordance with the rules. It was Webster who broke the rules by chosing a covention chairman on his own without a vote at the convention. When delegates found that out they elected Brent Tweed. He is an expert in parlimentary procedure, knows the rules and conducted the convention according to the rules. Webster was pissed off about this. He fabricated a report containing a bunch of lies and the RNC fell for it hook line and sinker.
The time has come for a new party that represents the American people.
The time has come to eliminate political parties.
And this is the party that wants to whine about “election fraud” when they can’t even run their own primaries and state conventions without them becoming fiascos? Bwahahahahaha… What a bunch of ultra maroons.
So much for choices, oh wait I forgot, it’s suppose to be a done deal with the coronation of Romney, gotta love the politics, but meanwhile, the Emporera (sp) has no clothes. Same crap, different day…what about the 99% that is trying to survive the whooodera?