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AMPA—He was the last wild card left in the Republican deck. But now Ron Paul too has been deftly played, ensuring Mitt Romney holds the only hand going in to this week’s Republican National Convention.
Up until Friday, Paul’s young and wildly committed supporters held out hope of mounting a coup on the convention floor in Tampa, or at least raising the flag noisily for their 77-year-old candidate.
But last-minute maneuvering by Mitt Romney’s legal team stripped Paul of a trove of delegates, leaving many of Paul’s libertarian-leaning supporters all dressed up with nowhere to go.
Instead Paul will end his third and likely final run for the presidency with what amounts to a political whimper: a “video tribute” to the former obstetrician and longtime Texas congressman will play on the convention floor.
However, Paul himself will not be trusted to speak. Though an invitation was proffered, it came with rigid conditions — Paul’s words would be vetted by Team Romney and include a full-throated endorsement. Ron Paul said no.
“It wouldn’t be my speech,” Paul told the New York Times. “That would undo everything I’ve done for the last 30 years. I don’t fully endorse him for president.”
It’s all adds up to a bitter pill for his true believers, several thousand of whom gathered Saturday at the Florida State Fairgrounds for an event billed as the Paul Festival.
Festive, it was not. As Tampa began to swell with the Republican faithful readying for Monday’s convention launch, the Paulistas vented freely.
“Where is our democracy? This is shaping up as the Old Crony Convention, changing the voting rules for seating delegates midway to shove Mitt Romney down our throats,” said Melissa Swetich, a Paul supporter from Orlando. “I don’t know what to do with my vote now. I’m waiting for Ron Paul to tell me.”
Others took a more incrementalist view, noting how deeply Paul’s unbending views on small government, low taxes and non-interventionism on the foreign front struck a chord with the 2012 electorate.
“He threw a wrench in the system, talking about auditing the Federal Reserve and closing down foreign military bases,” said Cory Peterson, a Paul supporter from Minneapolis. “I expected the system would push back.
“But in the meantime he achieved something real. He woke up a lot of us. And we’re not going to go back to sleep.”
The question is, where does the Ron Paul revolution go now? Some at Saturday’s gathering spoke bitterly of throwing their vote to Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, though he lacks Paul’s unscripted, blunt-talking appeal.
Others intend to wait for Sunday, hoping Paul himself will offer guidance in his final campaign rally — at University of South Florida’s Sun Dome, where as many as 10,000 supporters are expected to gather.
“Ron Paul said all along that it was up — the next generation — to us take this forward,” said Anne Davis, another Paul backer from Orlando.
“Yes, we’re disappointed. But he did an amazing job, not just shaking things up but building a serious movement that the Republican party needs to take seriously from now on. We’re not going away.”
If the Republicans were hoping to get Ron Paul supporters to vote for Romney they just fucked up royally. I see a lot of write ins for Ron Paul happening now since they can't play by the rules. It must be nice to just change the rules whenever you like to help one candidate.
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