Opinion: Ron Paul’s troops quietly take over some local GOP groups

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If anybody thought the Ron Paul Revolution had expired, they need to rethink that one.

Clearly, the 72-year-old libertarian-minded Texas representative was not going to win the Republican Party’s nomination this year with his 12, 20 or 42 delegates, whomever you believe. Sen. John McCain already has enough to win the GOP nod in St. Paul in September. So Paul has taken his well-funded campaign and gone rather underground to the local level where his loyal Paulunteers are organizing and taking over numerous county party operations in several states.

Quietly, beneath the political radar of the Republican Party establishment and mainstream media, they’re laboring at the local level. Last month Paul forces read the party rule book in Missouri and elected about a third of the delegates to the state convention that will pick the delegates to the national convention.

Last weekend in Nevada they drove through a rules change in the state party convention that halted the approval of pre-approved slates of convention delegates as a means to eventually substitute their own supporters to travel to St. Paul and boost Paul’s delegate totals for platform and other struggles this fall.

Using sophisticated communications techniques on the Nevada convention floor in Reno, Paul supporters transmitted mass text messaging to maneuver and direct their troops. When Paul appeared to speak, the ovation was thunderous.

At other times they shouted down the convention chair, Sen. Bob Beers. Taken by surprise the convention organizers and the McCain camp, which for instance had no supply of campaign signs to compete with the blizzard of Paul signs, eventually adjourned the convention in chaos without electing any delegates.

The excuse was the expiration of the convention’s contract with the host casino. No new convention date was announced. The Ron Paul crews move on to their next target.

--Andrew Malcolm

Photo Credit: RonPaul.com