Look into it a little further- Ron is actually second in delegates While he isn't snatching up the popular vote he is snatching up the delegates and the delegates really are the things that count in an election An example of Colorado one which Santorum won the straw poll for - In one precinct in Larimer County, the straw poll vote was 23 for Santorum, 13 for Paul, 5 for Romney, 2 for Gingrich. There were 13 delegate slots, and Ron Paul got ALL 13. - In a precinct in Delta County the vote was 22 for Santorum, 12 for Romney, 8 for Paul, 7 for Gingrich. There were 5 delegate slots, and ALL 5 went to Ron Paul. - In a Pueblo County precinct, the vote was 16 for Santorum, 11 for Romney, 3 for Gingrich and 2 for Paul. There were 2 delegate slots filled, and both were filled by Ron Paul supporters. Ron Paul for instance actually won Colorado when you add it all up. and the same delegate snatching trend is occurring in Minnesota, Nevada, and Iowa, and in Missouri. The thing is, after the cauces and straw poll all of the other candidates supporters leave while the Ron Paul supporters stay- the delegate process begins after the polling- so the majority of the people going through the delegate process are overwhelmingly in favor of Paul which means he is winning delegates left and right. The Polls actually do not matter in many of the states, it is all about who are chosen as delegates
The Gospel According to Obama Barack Obama says faith drives much of his domestic agenda—and no one even blinks. http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/...kle-the-gospel-according-to-obama-ar-1668676/ George W. Bush had one small office devoted to faith-based initiatives, and was savaged for it. Barack Obama, on the other hand, says faith drives much of his domestic agenda—and no one even blinks. We are in “the fourth year of the ministry of George W. Bush,” cracked novelist Philip Roth in 2004. By then, several million gallons of ink already had been spilled warning that Bush’s “faith-based presidency” was “nudging the church-state line” (The New York Times) and was “turning the U.S. into a religious state” (Village Voice) and was “arrogant” and “troubling” (St. Petersburg Times) and was “pandering to Christian zealots” (Salon) and “imposing its values on the rest of us” (too many to name). Obama has been just as overtly religious as Bush—“We worship an awesome God in the blue states,” he said in his 2004 keynoter at the Democratic National Convention—and even more aggressive about injecting faith into politics. In 2006, he praised a religious “Covenant for a New America.” In a 2008 speech in Ohio, he said religious faith could be “the foundation of a new project of American renewal” and insisted that “secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square.” He has kept Bush’s office of faith-based initiatives. In fact, “Obama's faith-based office has given religious figures a bigger role in influencing White House decisions,” reported USNews in 2009. At the National Prayer Breakfast last Thursday, the president began by noting that he prays every morning, and then devoted the rest of his speech to explaining the manifold ways in which his faith guides his policies. “I am my brother's keeper and I am my sister's keeper,” he said. That somnolent silence you hear is the guardians of church-state separation taking a nap. No big surprise. For many liberals, it is perfectly fine—desirable, in fact—for religious people to impose their values on the rest of us, so long as those values produce policies of which liberals approve: higher taxes, more stringent regulation, more government spending. On Thursday, for instance, Obama said there is a “biblical call to care for the least of these – for the poor; for those at the margins of our society,” which justifies not just voluntary private charity but enforced public charity. Yet woe betide any believers whose values stray from the leftist catechism. Who says so? The Obama administration, for starters. It has decreed that Catholic institutions such as hospitals and universities must provide birth control through their employee health plans, even though Catholic doctrine considers birth control a violation of the faith. The administration claimed to provide a conscience exception by allowing a narrow exception for churches. This is like ordering Jewish schools to buy pork for their cafeterias and then claiming to respect Judaism because synagogues are exempt. The New York Times, of course, was pleased as punch, though it denounced Mitt Romney for criticizing the mandate and promising to defend the Catholic Church’s “religious liberty”—a termThe Times put in quotes, to signify its disdain for the concept. This all comes shortly after the Supreme Court ruled, 9-0, that religious institutions have a right to abide by their religious beliefs (a decision The Times also criticized). Or take the temper tantrum that erupted last week when the Susan G. Komen Foundation for the Cure, a women’s-health organization, decided—briefly—to stop giving its own money to Planned Parenthood. Let’s suppose Komen’s 27.3 million critics were correct in thinking the move was motivated by anti-abortion sentiments, which are essentially religious sentiments. So? Isn’t Obama right to say secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door? Some claimed the issue was women’s health. Not so. The Komen foundation would not have shoved the money formerly earmarked for Planned Parenthood under a mattress. It would have spent the money on women’s-health initiatives elsewhere. Leftists were not upset because Komen’s decision shrank the pool of funding for cancer screenings and so forth; it would not have. They were fuming because Komen no longer wanted to tithe one of liberalism’s most sacred institutions. So apoplexy ensued, and Komen climbed down. The lesson from all of this? Liberals should be able to impose their faith-based values on the rest of us, but any heretics who deviate from liberal dogma may not even observe their faith-based values by themselves. It’s right there in the Apocrypha—you can look it up.
I'm aware of Obama's religious leanings, and I'm not down with that either. Have you not realized that, as an atheist, I have no one to choose from who aligns fully (or even in a majority sense) with my beliefs/values? So, how can I be a hypocrite for supporting the guy represents my views the most (Obama has reached out to the secular community more than any other President in history) out of a field of people who don't come close? Are you aware that, given the circumstances, it is impossible for that to be "hypocrisy"?
No, not really - as explained in my post to ToyCen. Yes, these 3 counties selected by Ron Paul have been posted many, many times. Anecdotal evidence provided by the campaign has basically no value. But even that said, it's sort of irrelevant - these delegates are sent to county conventions, and then some are picked for the state convention, where a tiny portion is picked for the national convention. The precinct delegates are useful info, but they don't remotely tell the whole story. As mentioned earlier, Ron Paul was claiming he had 40+ delegates in early February in 2008 and, at the convention, had a total of 15. This strategy doesn't work as well in practice as it does in theory.
Questions for the Ron Paul supporters regarding this Are you ok with your candidate ignoring the will of the people in these instances? If the situation were reversed and Paul had won the vote and some Romney supporters found a way to game the system and steal what should rightly be pauls delegates, would you still be ok with it?
This isn't true at all. Ron Paul had hundreds of delegates to the convention in 2008. Anyone who was there can confirm that. The difference was that he only had a majority in Montana, and only had significant minorities in a couple of other states, like Nevada and Minnesota. The votes were reported by the party leaders, who often didn't even take a vote. Several of my friends were Paul delegates, either unpledged by rule, or pledged to Huckabee and released, and the record shows them as having voted for McCain. That can go under the radar when McCain has 2000+ delegates out of 2400. If Romney has 1100 delegates out of 2300, it will be much, much different. By the way, this was much worse at the Democratic convention for Hilary delegates that still wanted to vote for her, but that's besides the point.
So what is the point in voting Santorum, Mittens, or Gingrich to office if they are not an improvement over Obama in reducing the national debt?? http://www.washingtonpost.com/busin.../02/22/gIQAzAJvUR_story.html?wpisrc=dailypaul
The GOP dictates what the "will of the people" is. The game now is to try and get over on the establishment.
We don't have a direct democracy in our country, we have a democratic republic. So the one vote one voice actually does not matter. "It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything." Joseph Stalin
The GOP decided from the beginning that mittens was their candidate. The establishment can not go wrong with either Mittens or Obama.
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I know what we have. I'll make this very simple and direct. In pueblo county, are you ok with the fact that the last place candidate received both delegates while the three candidates that finished above him received none?
I am ok with it, you witness a better prepared campaing playing within the rules. What seperated them was the will and knowledge of the voters to make sure that they have an opportunity of being selected to represent the state in which they voted from.
