Rigged for Romney?

I would ask my readers to look around.  You’re being herded, and if you haven’t noticed it yet, you should begin to notice something odd about the events in Virginia, and more, the happenings in the media.  At present, there are to be only two valid candidates on the Virginia Republican primary ballot for the presidential nomination: Willard “Mitt” Romney, and Ron Paul.  All of the others have been disqualified for insufficient valid petition signatures, and while there is a controversy arising surrounding the validity of signatures for Gingrich and a potential recount, what’s clear is that some sort of monkey business is going on.  There are those who are seeking to use this as an opportunity to build a write-in campaign for Sarah Palin, but the question is then whether those ballots would themselves be valid.

The idea is to deny Virginia’s convention delegates to Romney, but this approach using a write-in candidate may not be a valid method.  If so, this would cause voters to throw their votes away, and more, would still guarantee Romney the delegates.  As all of this goes on, the all-out war in the media against Ron Paul has gone nuclear.  There can be only one reason for this timing, and it’s really quite simple:  The establishment knows that they must make Ron Paul so thoroughly unpalatable to mainstream conservatives and Tea Party types that the people of Virginia will not support him as a protest vote against Romney.

I’ve been looking at some of the suggested approaches by grass-roots types to stave off a Romney win in Virginia by agitating a write-in campaign.  Since Virginia is a winner-take-all state, where any candidate who gets more than half the votes will walk away with all of the delegates to the national convention, the only way the votes are apportioned is if no candidate manages to make 50%.  With only Ron Paul and Mitt Romney in the race as valid candidates, somebody is going to make 50%, because it would take at least a three-way race to prevent that outcome.  What the proponents of the write-in campaign are suggesting is that a write-in that would siphon votes primarily from Romney would enable an apportionment, and at least prevent Romney from walking away with all of Virginia’s delegates.  The problem is that the question of how such write-in ballots would be treated.  They may be discarded, and therefore not count in the total, making no difference whatever to the final percentages, and presumably, the Romney-takes-all scenario.

There is only one method that is certain to deny Romney the delegates that will be awarded in Virginia, and it’s the only way I can see under the law that this is possible: Virginia Republicans would need to choose Ron Paul, giving him all of the delegates.  Now this may be distasteful to some, as Congressman Paul’s record on foreign policy is pretty hard to swallow, but that’s not the question that now rests on the table before Virginia’s primary voters.  The question is:  Are you satisfied being denied your choice for the Republican nomination by the establishment that so thoroughly dominates Virginia’s Republican party?  If you’re in Virginia, and you’re a supporter of Bachmann, Huntsman, or Santorum, you know your candidates did not even make a serious effort to get on the ballot.  Have you asked “why?”  If you’re a Gingrich or Perry Supporter(and Gingrich still polls as the front-runner in Virginia,) you might want to know why there was a rule change to the method by which petition signatures were validated just for this election cycle.

Here’s the thing you must understand, however: If you’re left with the choice of Ron Paul and Willard “Mitt” Romney, choosing the latter helps him defeat the candidate you prefer in the overall delegate count necessary to win the nomination.  Consider it another way:  If you sit home, saying “screw the primary,” out of disgust and dejection, you’re not choosing Romney, but you’re not voting against him, either.  If you go to the polls and reluctantly support him, you’re killing off the chance that Gingrich or any of the others will be nominated.  If you go to the polls and support Ron Paul, you’re voting against Romney, you’re voting for a candidate who will not likely get the nomination, and if he wins all the delegates, it hurts Romney much more than it helps Ron Paul.

This is why the flurry of stories about Ron Paul have been going viral these last few days:  They must make Ron Paul unacceptable to you, so that you don’t support him as a form of protest vote.  I’m not suggesting to you that Paul’s statements make him palatable, because they don’t.  I’m not telling you Ron Paul should get the nomination, because I don’t believe that he should, particularly based on his foreign policy views.  What I’m telling you is that if you want to derail Romney, Ron Paul presents the best vehicle for so doing, at least in Virginia.  In other words, I’m not suggesting you nominate Ron Paul, but I’m asking you to think strategically like those in the establishment have been doing. If you want any candidate other than Willard, this may be the only way to stop him.

Put it this way, if you like:  If Gingrich and Romney battle closely in states where delegates are apportioned, it will be close, but if either candidate captures significant states where the rules are “winner take all,” that upsets the balance, and the race becomes a blow-out.  Since there are now to be only two candidates on the ballot in Virginia, it is guaranteed that one of them will get all the delegates to the convention.  If it’s Romney, it’s almost certain to sew up the nomination for him. If you’re a supporter of any of the non-Romney candidates, Virginia now offers him the opportunity to finish your candidate’s chances of capturing the nomination.

With so many states having yielded half their delegates to the national party in order to move their primaries up to an earlier date on the calendar, it was already going to be difficult to defeat the establishment GOP’s will in this contest.  You can bet all of those additional at-large delegates will wind up supporting whomever the party insiders decide should be the nominee.  That’s right, you’ve been hosed, again, and this is why for those of you in Virginia who don’t like Romney, but also can’t stand Paul, it’s time for you to join the world of making choices from the point of view of the “big picture.”  It’s therefore a simple matter at present, and assuming Gingrich is unable to get his name on the Virginia ballot,  voting for anybody other than Ron Paul effectively gives Mitt Romney the nomination, despite roughly 75% of the party finding him to be something between poor and completely unacceptable.

It’s a bitter pill to swallow, and I realize walking into the voting booth and holding one’s nose while throwing the lever for Ron Paul seems unacceptable to many, but let’s be blunt:  That may be the only chance you, or anybody else in this country has to affect the outcome of this process in any substantial way.  It’s been rigged, and by now you should know it, and if you don’t, it’s time to wake up.  Otherwise, the “inevitable nominee” will be, and you’ll spend the fall wondering why we’re losing to a jerk like Obama.  If Romney wins the nomination, think “Bob Dole,” and remember how well he did.  Romney will fare no better.