Was Ron Paul ever going to win the GOP nomination? “No” says Shaun Connell at the Washington Times where he was a state-short of winning one.
From Connell:
A common theme heard from hundreds of thousands of Ron Paul supporters is the notion that Ron Paul had enough delegates to be nominated, but at the last moment the establishment swooped in and stopped him. The establishment certainly changed some of the rules and took on the Tea Party and the Ron Paul movement, but that doesn’t mean they stopped a Paul nomination.
Ron Paul didn’t didn’t have the delegates necessary for nomination, not even if he’d received all of the Maine delegates. He was a state short.
He knew this months ago when he sent an email to supporters saying that his delegates were “not enough.” There certainly was cheating during the election, but Ron Paul at the convention wasn’t going to win ― he couldn’t win ― and he wasn’t going to be nominated. Nothing could have changed this at the convention.
Ron Paul never had the delegates needed
A while back, I wrote an article discussing Paul’s legacy, arguing that Romney was going to be the nominee, and quoted Ron Paul himself:
“When it is all said and done, we will likely have as many as 500 supporters as delegates on the Convention floor. That is just over 20 percent! And while this total is not enough to win the nomination, it puts us in a tremendous position to grow our movement and shape the future of the GOP!”
The GOP rules stated that you must have a plurality of the delegates in five states to be entered in nomination. This is different than just having “multiple” delegates or even just 5 states. It means you have to have more delegates in the state that nominates you than any other candidate, though not necessarily a majority. This rule is what stopped Ron Paul from becoming nominated.
Some people have noted that the GOP upped the requirement to eight states from five, but, as Reason Magazine reports, that doesn’t go into effect until next election, and it had no impact on Paul’s chances to be nominated this year.
Did Paul have the five necessary? No. The only states where he had a plurality were Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, and Louisiana. Even then, Louisiana was strongly contested, as was Maine. Regardless, those are only four states. Five states nominated Paul, as well as a territory, but they weren’t the right five states as they didn’t have a plurality of Ron Paul delegates.
Read more: Ron Paul never had the delegates to win | Washington Times Communities
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