Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito

"Do not give in to evils, but proceed ever more boldly against them."

We ain't done. Not by a long shot. Super Tuesday may have been the Ron Paul Revolution's Valley Forge, but like Washington would have been damned if he'd given in to the British, damned if I have to vote for McCain, Romney, Huckabee, Obama, or Hillary in November.

Do I expect you all to join me in supporting, or continuing to support the good doctor? Nope. But be on notice: I'll be here doing just that, annoying you who'd have me give in to conventional wisdom and politics as usual, through the convention and beyond.

Now, on to the future: 3 days from now, are the Lousiana primaries which are a beauty contest unless someone gets 67% of the vote, the Republican Kansas caucuses, and the Washington caucasus. You'd have to have not been paying any attention to realize that Paul does 400-500% better in caucus states than in primary states. Washington went overwhelmingly for Bush in the 2000 primaries (85-15% against McCain); I expect Paul will get 2nd or 3rd place here, beating at least McCain, while Romney will win it; it will of course be a pleasant surprise to do better. Huckabee may well have taken Kansas in a primary, but it's evident that Romney and Paul have the best organization to get people to caucus in these states; I expect Paul to take 3rd, with 2nd being a pleasant surprise.

I expect you to be disappointed.

Anybody notice all the votes that went to Thompson yesterday? It is a shame he didn't stick it out. McCain has arisen from the dead, and I suspect Clinton Inc. has a surprise all lined up and ready to fire to bring McCain down a few notches between now and election day.

I don't have to join you. I'm already with you.

I have no illusions about his chances. To me, it's about getting a message out to the Republican Party (there is no sense in even trying to get such a message across to the Democrats): We want government out of our private lives, except where necessary. We want people to be able to produce their own successes, or failures, on their own, and then deal with what they have done rather than expect someone to fix it for them (if they made a mess) or take it away from them to "help" those who didn't do as well (if they did a good job).

Ron Paul does not suit me 100%. Some of his positions are fairly different from my own. But he sure is closer than anyone else who is out there, and by his willingness to work with the Republicans if possible, rather than simply flee the party for some dinky group that has no chance of being credible at a national level, he shows he understands how American politics works.

There is very little chance that the Republicans will nominate someone I consider significantly better than what the Democrats have to offer. Unless that very unlikely event happens, I will almost certainly vote Ron Paul in November, by write-in if necessary.

Hang in there, the primaries should give people enough ammo to go to the convention and get the platform changed to something everyone can live with. Not that it always works that way, though...

I dont agree with Paul 100% either. But I agree with the other candidates far, far less. So, yeah. I'll write in Paul even though he probably has no chance.

Unfortunately the media blackout on Ron Paul was a success. Congratulations, media; you get to decide what candidates are acceptable choices and people will follow you. It's not that I thought he had a great shot at winning, but I'm sure he would have had higher numbers if he was given fair coverage e.g. if faux news would have shown that he came in second in Nevada instead of ignoring him completely.

However, I am happy that Paul established a new wing of the Republican party. Thanks to this campaign there will be Ron Paul republicans to vote for in the future.

Or you could go with

Vox populi, vox dei.

And as always:

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur

Aside from Paul, I had hoped that Romney and Huckabee would do better yesterday. Still, all combined they have just less than 100 fewer delegates than McCain. Which means unless McCain runs away with 60%+ of the remaining contests, it will be a brokered convention. The party knows this:

is true.

That prediction I wasn't ready to make last week? The second assumption was Romney would do fairly well yesterday, but still be several dozen delegates short of McCain. I didn't see Huckabee doing as well as he did.

The prediction was that it would in fact end up as a brokered convention, and that Paul would have enough delegates to make a deal with Romney to give the nomination to Mark Sanford, with Paul as his running mate, and Romney in the Cabinet, somewhere we could see just how conservative he really is. Romney's got the 8 years to wait for the presidency, and there's little question that Paul and McCain would be too old to run in 2016. Romney of course gets to deny McCain the nomination, and saves the party in the process.

Huckabee's success could be viewed one of two ways: either Paul will have so few delegates that he can barely throw the nomination, in which case Romney will demand the VP spot, or Huckabee won't make the deal which would let Romney be VP, and Sanford has to choose someone else entirely for a running mate, which may or may not be Paul. Either way, I'm still pretty sure that, barring unexpected success for McCain, Sanford will be the GOP nominee. While not ideal, that suits me a hell of a lot better than McCain, Romney, or Huckabee.

He doesn't have to run away with any of them. Nearly every primary left is a winner take all. Romney has obviously hit his ceiling. All McCain has to do is keep getting around 40% of the vote like he has and he will have the nomination clinched in a month or two at the most.

Bah, just found out that CNN's delegate counts didn't include California. McCain will have to do genuinely poorly not to get the nomination, especially if McCain offers Huckabee the VP spot in exchange for delegates. But hell if I'm going to give up when the alternative is McCain vs. Hillary.

On the plus side, if it is, Paul has nothing at all to lose by running independent. It's not like he could prevent a conservative from winning the White House by running.

Paul needs to get out NOW if he wants to run as an indy. Declaring an indy run after nearly the whole country gave you single digit support in a primary is not a good foundation to run upon.

I suspect that if he's going to, it'll be after the CPAC straw poll, contingent on how McCain does. If the results are similar to the 2007 straw poll, with McCain taking last, that could be a good springboard.

*Sigh*

No.

I think I have a new avatar and user title...

Nope, can't get a good crop, and it's unrecognizable shrunk.

I don't know. Are these really so bad:

Not as long as there's an Electoral College.

The top one's not so bad, but there's no way I'm leaving out Tech Seargent Chen.

I voted for Paul as a mini-protest.

It's not that I hate McCain, but I think I need to hear him make a strong case for the conservative/libertarian faction of the GOP to vote for him.

Yes.

All I can say is:

No, he's right.

Paul isn't done.

You have to start something to be done with it.

I'm impressed with how long this thread lasted without any Paul ridicule.

If Paul supporters want equal treatment, they should expect equal scorn.

The delegate counters in the media suck, apparently. The Paul campaign is reporting having a total of 42 delegates after yesterday; no one in the media is reporting him over 20.

There's still hope for a brokered convention; McCain appears to be walking out of Super Tuesday with 700 delegates, not 775 as I feared earlier.

State breakdown:
Alaska: 3
Colorado: 4
Iowa: 4
Louisiana: 3
Maine: 3
Minnesota: 9
Nevada: 8
N. Dakota: 5
West Vir.: 3

Don't you have anything to say about Paul besides "he can't win?" Because you've already said that a few dozen times and it's starting to get annoying. Can't you come up with something original?

Oh wait, you're in Hollywood. My mistake; I'll try to ask of you something less demanding than originality.

I can't imagine anything I've said is anywhere near as annoying as the deluge of Ron Paul delusion that's gripped this board for the past six months.

What you've said? No. How many times you've said it? Yes.

Besides, you have the ignore button. I don't.

If you aren't supporting McCain or Romney (whoever wins) when the general election rolls around I will be shocked.