But hey, there's no reason to pay attention to any of this. It doesn't really matter. After all, SOMEONE THREW PEANUTS AT A CNN CAMERAPERSON!!!!!!!!!!! OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This amazes me in its brazenness

Who cares.

You do know teleprompters aren't prerecorded, right? The teleprompter just replaces the ear wig. There is no conspiracy here any more than when Peter Jennings announces the winner in November. He is reading it from a teleprompter too. Only a fucktard could think this was some kind of conspiracy.

I watched the clip again. It's pretty clear that the No's are about equal with the yes's and the teleprompter has the "ayes" as majority when the No's are barely starting up. I am not sure it's conspiracy, just willing to entertain how contrived this might be in conjunction with other information that is readily available and (generally) verifiable.

This is obviously a case where the live vote didn't matter. The telepromter cleary says that the "ayes" won the vote even before the "no's" speak. Either they assumed it would go in favor of the ayes or they just rigged it, who knows.

More a case of an expected result like the "Dewey Wins" newspaper headline. I doubt they expected a close vote.

I agree with Draugnar. The GOp has handled the whole behind-the-scenes rules issue quite badly, but I don't think they're doing anyhing crooked.

I may be biased in that I think that lessening the influence of "activists" on selecting the nominee and putting more emphasis on primaries is a good idea, however. If a simple vote is good enough to pick the president, I don't see why we need anything else to pick the people who will run for the office.

No, Draugnar, the only fucktard here is the fucktard who hasn't paid any attention to the blatant cheating and mass corruption throughout the Republican nomination process and just takes this one thing in a vacuum and blindly assumes there could be nothing wrong.

Further, the only fucktard here is the fucktard who thinks that this is remotely analogous to reading out the presidential winner after the votes have been tallied. Only a complete and utter fucktard could not recognize that this was a live vote that was supposed to decide the outcome of the rules vote, and therefore could not recognize, in his utter fucktardation, that the GOP didn't even count the votes and had no intention to count the votes.

And, finally, it would take a fucktard of magnitudes unprecedented in the quite fucktarded history of fucktardkind to make the absolutely fucktarded claim that a teleprompter's script is NOT written beforehand. Sure, you can use a teleprompter anyway with if/then conditions (i.e. "Say: Ayes have it if ayes win; nays have it if nays win") - but, as any non-fucktard could see, no such condition was on the screen.

So, my dear fucktard, please take your fucktarded accusations of fucktardation somewhere else, as they're out of order. :)

@draug - I understand your point about TelePrompTers not being prerecorded. But think of what was said and who was saying it. In the opinion of the chair the ayes have it. Are you saying the chair told the TelePrompTer what to type?

FDR >> Nixon >> Bush >> Palin >> Bachmann >> Perry >> Cain >> Gingrich >> Romney. No wonder you guys don't believe in evolution.

Eisenhower, not FDR ^^

This is all a tempest in a teapot. So long as the primaries and caucuses are legit it shouldn't matter at all how the particular delegates are chosen delegates or even how the platform and things like that are decided. Conventions are just big rallies and will be until someone un-invents the internet and long distance phone calls. They are a useful relic, not much more.

But if you're going to be outraged then you also have to be outraged at the Democrats not even seating the thirty-odd delegates legitimately won by people other than Obama who ran for the nomination. If convention are anything besides pep rallies to rubber stamp the nominee who's already been chosen then the choices made by the Democrats are as least as bad as the GOP's. If you ask me, though, the decisions by the parties are only politically stupid, not indicative of some vast, evil conspiracy against democracy.

"So long as the primaries and caucuses are legit"

Someone has clearly not been paying attention these last eight months.

For a brief and incomplete summary of the shenanigans the GOP establishment and media has committed throughout the nomination process, see here:
http://www.examiner.com/article/how-the-gop-stole-the-nomination

No, I have. Apart from poorly run caucuses (which is why I think they should be abolished and we just have primaries), nothing untoward happened. Romney won the most votes, which lead to the most delegates. The convention is not the place to select the candidate anymore. It was already decided months before that he was the guy by the voters. As much as I like Ron Paul and think he and his supporters were treated very rudely by the GOP at the convention, the fact is simply that he didn't win and he didn't win fair and square. In most ways I think that's too bad, but it's reality and now we have to live with it.

It's rich that the Ron Paul die-hards complain that this is such a miscarriage of democracy, when quite a lot of the delegates which supported him were picked at caucuses in states where Romney or someone else had already won the primary. Is it really right for the voters' choices to be overturned just because another candidate's supporters showed up for some antiquated pow-wow weeks or months after everyone thought the issue was settled? What next, should we wait for white smoke to see who the presidential nominee will be?

"Apart from poorly run caucuses (which is why I think they should be abolished and we just have primaries), nothing untoward happened."

Really? You think there is nothing untoward about the Iowa caucus results, where results from pro-Paul caucuses simply disappeared, two different winners were declared in turn, reported results differed from the results observed from people who were actually there, and Republican Party mucky-mucks had to resign in disgrace over the fiasco? No problem with the Romney-controlled Maine Republican Party simply declaring that Paul-leaning counties just wouldn't be allowed to vote? No suspicions at all about the Clark County Nevada results taking FOUR DAYS to tally up, conveniently putting NEWT GINGRICH of all people in second place in the Sin State, with a religious testing being applied at the door for one of the biggest caucus locations? Or of government storm troopers breaking the bones of Ron Paul supporters at the Louisiana state convention? Or of RNC-controlled buses full of Ron Paul delegates getting "lost" on the way to the convention? Or of... do I really need to keep going? NONE of this gives you pause to think that the process may not have been conducted in a fair and just manner?

"It's rich that the Ron Paul die-hards complain that this is such a miscarriage of democracy, when quite a lot of the delegates which supported him were picked at caucuses in states where Romney or someone else had already won the primary."

If you don't like the caucus process, fine. But those are the rules that everyone agreed to when the game started at the beginning of the year. Those rules were continually ignored and changed in mid-process any time they favored Dr. Paul. The whole Paul campaign strategy was centered around those rules. Your argument is essentially "We don't like the rules, so it's okay by me when people who followed them get trampled underfoot by corrupt rule-ignoring plutocrats".

And under a winner-take-all primary-only system like you're pushing for, Ron Paul would not have bothered with the Republican Party, opting instead for a 3rd party candidacy. Romney would've been even more screwed than he is now had that happened. Is that really what you want? By carrying water for Romney and the thugocracy wing of the party, you are helping to sever what is left of the weak bonds tying libertarian Paul supporters to the Republican Party. Many of those Paul delegates will now be voting for Gary Johnson - had they been treated with respect and fairness throughout the process, and made to feel like they were getting a fair shake in the primary process, many of them would've held their nose and voted for Romney in November in the hopes that a libertarian candidate could do better within the GOP in 2016. Now, it is obvious to many that the whole process is rigged and there is no point in participating. Job well done! Here in California, I am encouraging Paulistas to register as Libertarians - we only need a few thousand to put us over the registration threshold for guaranteed ballot status.

ALSO: The RNC isn't just about crowning the presidential nominee. You also have the platform, bylaws, and Republican National Committee elections there. We Paulists wanted to play a part in all of that as well, even while we knew that we would not have enough delegates to get the nomination. But as we have all seen, the whole process from front to back is a sham, decided somewhere by parties unknown behind a curtain of secrecy, the results reported to us from the podium by someone reading from a teleprompter. Welcome to the new Sovietized America, everyone.

Tolstoy - I hate to say this but you are sounding an awful lot like Putin.

You wound me, Draug. But there is no claim in my previous post I can't provide a link for.

OK - then back up the religiois testing at the door statement with reputable news sources and not fringe liberal mouthpieces.

Your whole first paragraph is about poorly run caucuses, which I said happened. Caucuses still exist and we have to live with them, but I can COMPLETELY understand not letting Paul supporters alter the proportion of delegates at the caucus after there's already been a primary. What's so hard to understand about that?

"And under a winner-take-all primary-only system like you're pushing for, Ron Paul would not have bothered with the Republican Party, opting instead for a 3rd party candidacy."

When did I say winner-take-all? You could award the delegates proportionally. The point is that they're determined by election results, not nutjobs like you moving from one end of a middle school gym to the other.

Anyone considering voting for Gary Johnson should know that just helps Obama. No matter how mean Paul supporters think the GOP has treated them (and they really haven't been treated well), anybody with a serious understanding of politics would understand Obama would be far, far worse for libertarian policies than Romney. If Johnson gets more than the standard Libertarian Party margin of the vote I'll eat my shoe.

"The RNC isn't just about crowning the presidential nominee. You also have the platform, bylaws, and Republican National Committee elections there."

That may be literally true, but it's also irrelevant. The platform binds no one, the bylaws are of little practical importance outside the party structure, and committeemen exist just to spend money right and give people who aren't suited to elected office a chance to play politics. These decisions have an importance within the party institutions, but not in the country at large.

I could give a rat's ass about how the GOP or Democratic Party govern themselves internally, so long as they behave themselves in their public offices. Since they obviously don't that's where energy should be spent, not on student council issues like this.

"OK - then back up the religiois testing at the door statement with reputable news sources and not fringe liberal mouthpieces."

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/anger-at-night-caucus-over-a-religious-declaration/

I'll deal with Invictus after I get something to eat and finish counting to 10.

That religious test thing really doesn't sound as bad as you make it out to be. If I had to guess I'd agree it's unconstitutional, but it was only applied to the second session, which only existed because of religious reasons. It's not as if they couldn't vote at all due to a religious test, just that they couldn't vote at the session designed explicitly to accommodate orthodox Jews.

It's still outrageous and shouldn't have happened, but (as usual) you're making a pretty minor issue into a huge deal.

Here is the funny thing... I'm a Ron Paul supporter (voted for him in the primary) and I find the lame assets excuses provided by those turned away to be bullshit. That special caucas session was held to make concession and not disenfranchised the Jewish voters. The excuse of couldn't get off work is billshit as it is *Federal* law that employers *must* be given time to go to the polls. And the idiot woman who was late... Her own fucking fault. So the Republican party tries not to disenfranchise those with religious reasons for not attending the regularly scheduled session and they take heat for it? Total fucking bullshit.

Another problem with caucuses. Primaries last all day. No meeting to miss, just a time window that pretty much everyone can work with. If I remember right the Illinois one was even on a Saturday, so there's not even the (legitimate) excuse that it was too hard to get off work.

Seriously, why do caucuses still exist?

Never mind, it was a Tuesday. I didn't have class Tuesdays or Thursdays last spring.

I would just like to say I'm from Iowa, I participate in the caucus process, and I think it's a great way to get people involved in politics on a grass-roots, community level. I personally spoke on behalf of Ron Paul at my precinct's caucus and during the free discussion time before the vote I got to talk to several people about Ron Paul and I think I swayed a few. Paul easily won our precinct and many neighboring precincts.

Sure, there were a very few precincts in Iowa that screwed up their ballots, but we're talking a couple hundred people tops. That can happen with voting machines too. I like our system and I'm standing by it.

We shouldn't have voting machines either. Nothing wrong with those scantron things. Paper trails are very important.

The failure of the Iowa caucuses this year has hopefully discredited them forever. It may be a nice way to get people involved in grass roots politics, but it's no way to pick a president. Just have a primary, for goodness sakes.

"Your whole first paragraph is about poorly run caucuses, which I said happened."

There's a slight difference between "poorly run" and "deliberately fixed to guarantee the nomination of the candidate the party power-brokers selected in a smoke-filled back room".

"The point is that they're determined by election results, not nutjobs like you moving from one end of a middle school gym to the other."

Great. Secret ballots, counted by a machine running a secret proprietary programming algorithm written and configured by God-knows-who in some cubicle five states away, With people voting only for one of the two or three candidates the liberal media has declared "electable". Far more transparent, open, honest, and accurate than neighbors gathering at the local high school gym after hearing from a spokesperson for all of the elligible candidates.

"Anyone considering voting for Gary Johnson should know that just helps Obama."

Since Obamney is about 0% worse than Rombama, I do not consider this a negative.

"Obama would be far, far worse for libertarian policies than Romney."

Certainly so - if you are an intelligent and ambitious young man hoping for a job in the federal bureaucracy or punditocracy some day, who is seeing the price paid today by those who fail to toe the party line.

"If Johnson gets more than the standard Libertarian Party margin of the vote I'll eat my shoe."

I'm told that Arby's horseraddish sauce makes shoes more palatable. Fortunately, I've never had to discover the truth of this claim for myself.

"The platform binds no one"

If that's true, why did I just hear Pat Buchanan on the radio saying that Romney should bash Obama over the head with the Democratic plank on abortion - which calls for taxpayer-funded 9th month baby killings? Party platforms serve as a party's core statement of principles.

"bylaws are of little practical importance outside the party structure"

I guess that explains the teleprompter running the bylaws committee report - I mean, who really cares about how many state delegation majorities it takes to nominate someone from the floor? Or whether or not the "presumptive nominee" (presumed by who?) gets to disqualify delegates and pick his own replacements on a whim?

"committeemen exist just to spend money right and give people who aren't suited to elected office a chance to play politics."

Yeah. Really, who cares about how the billions of dollars the RNC collects is spent? And access to donor lists? Future convention, bylaws, platform, and judicial committees? And who really cares about who appoints the Republican Party press secretary or financial controller? Bah, humbug! Do you have any experience working on the inside of a political party or campaign, Invictus? Political parties are immensely important - they control donors, mailing lists, volunteer lists, phone banks, local offices, and all sorts of other valuable information and resources. Which is why where Paulistas have taken over Republican state parties (like in Nevada), the Romneyites have felt compelled to set up shadow state party organizations to fill their roles and keep the Paulistas out of the process.

FlemGem +100 - thank you for your service! You have done more to safeguard what remains of Americans' freedom than any Imperial Stormtrooper in Afghanistan or police officer who beat up a hippie.

I'm still not getting how the Iowa caucuses failed. We got together in our communities, talked like civilized people, and voted. Why does this bother people so much?

"The excuse of couldn't get off work is billshit as it is *Federal* law that employers *must* be given time to go to the polls."

Federal election law is for federal elections, not state party caucuses. The federal law only allows employees to take (IIRC) 2 or 4 hours off to vote, but caucuses often take all day. Not to mention that there is no requirement that an employer pay an employee for time they take off to vote. In Las Vegas, where unemployment is 20-30% and Saturdays are the busiest work days of the week, taking a Saturday off to go vote in a party caucus is not a good career move - even if you can afford to piss away a day's wages.

"Caucuses still exist and we have to live with them, but I can COMPLETELY understand not letting Paul supporters alter the proportion of delegates at the caucus after there's already been a primary."

Translation: "Yes, we still have to let the rubes feel they have a voice with their caucuses, but once the sheeple who believe pulling a lever is the upper limit of civic responsibility have chosen one of the two or three candidates we have told them are acceptable, that's that."

Caucuses take all day? I caucused for Obama in 2008, and it was a couple hours 6-7 PM.

And it was a lot more involved than when I caucused for Bradley in 2000.... that was really short. :P

So, effectively, Tolstoy believes that the votes of Ron Paul supporters in caucuses should count more than the votes of other Republicans who voted in primary elections. Ron Paul didn't win. Live with it.

"With people voting only for one of the two or three candidates the liberal media has declared "electable""

ROFL. The liberal media was in Ron Paul's pocket. He's the only candidate who could get away with routinely storming off in a huff the handful of times he was asked remotely difficult questions. He got more positive coverage than any other Republican candidate.

http://www.dailypaul.com/209673/cbs-newss-ron-paul-coverage-overwhelmingly-positive

Very little could occur without the Paulites crying foul, concocting conspiracy theories, and whining about unfair treatment. That's the entirety of their worldview. They live to feel oppressed. The idea that they think voting for GJ is going to make a difference in this "rigged" election is about as hilarious as their thinking the Social Security check cashing RP who voted the biggest expansion of Presidential war power in history is a 'man of principle'

"And under a winner-take-all primary-only system like you're pushing for, Ron Paul would not have bothered with the Republican Party, opting instead for a 3rd party candidacy. Romney would've been even more screwed than he is now had that happened. Is that really what you want? By carrying water for Romney and the thugocracy wing of the party, you are helping to sever what is left of the weak bonds tying libertarian Paul supporters to the Republican Party. "

Translation: Give the Paulies everything they want, or they'll take their ball & go home. Rather than abide by the will of the voters, they'll destroy the party. Nice.

This whole thing is funny because Ron Paul basically played the part of Romney's little stooge throughout the primary season, attacking Romney's rivals while avoiding hitting Romney.

You never cease to amuse me, Putin. You of all people, I would have thought, would be thrilled to see a splintering of the Eeeevil Republicans. I guess your love of authority and hierarchy trumps your desire to see the ultimate triumph of the socialist candidate this year.

"Tolstoy believes that the votes of Ron Paul supporters in caucuses should count more than the votes of other Republicans who voted in primary elections."

I believe that elections should be conducted in a fair and impartial manner, and that the rules that are set down to govern them should be followed. I guess that makes me crazy.

Are you better off today than when Obama took office ? Are you a college grad moving BACK HOME instead of into your first place because you haven't a job?

"You of all people, I would have thought, would be thrilled to see a splintering of the Eeeevil Republicans."

Oh, I am thrilled. I hope you Paulies and Teabaggers continue to try and rip the GOP apart. I also said the GOP decision to centralize control over delegates was a mistake. But that doesn't prevent me from recognizing you Paulies are petulant children with a chip on your shoulder begging for a fight.

"Are you better off today than when Obama took office ?" Are you a college grad moving BACK HOME instead of into your first place because you haven't a job?"

Gee, what do you think the job market for grads was like from Sept 2008 - Jan 2009? Oh right, George W Bush didn't exist in Republican fairyland.

By any objective standard, yes. Economy shrinking in January 2009. Economy growing today. Job losses of epic proportions in January 2009. Continuous private sector job growth since March 2010. Auto manufactures on the verge of complete collapse. Auto manufactures once again leading the word in sales. A stock market in free fall. A stabilized stock market.