Ron Paul’s backers cried foul before the Republican State Convention opened on Saturday and after it, they met in a Norman hotel parking lot to protest handling of the convention by GOP officials.
The entire event was streamed on the Internet by an enterprising Paul supporter, with thousands looking in during the marathon events of the day. The streaming included Twitter comments by viewers and some were taken aback by the crude language, combative attitudes, disrespect and rudeness displayed by some of the Paul backers who commented.
In the end, the party’s slate of national convention delegates was approved as Convention Chairman Marc Nuttle of Norman maintained order and insisted that the party’s rules be followed. Despite his best efforts, however, Paul’s supporters were critical of the proceedings and claimed Paul had been “robbed,” a familiar cry in almost every state where Paul’s delegate slate was not victorious.
The Oklahoman’s Michael McNutt was present for the entire convention. He reported, “Backers of Paul, a Texas congressman, booed Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a onetime 2012 GOP presidential contender, when both encouraged the approximately 1,400 delegates to support the presumed Republican Party presidential nominee Mitt Romney.”
Read the entire story: http://newsok.com/oklahoma-republicans-elect-delegates-to-national-convention/article/3675104#ixzz1ujRNRagh
I have no idea where you get this story, but it has serious issues. What “crying foul before the convention” are you referring to? There were issues to be addressed as part of regular business, such as the fiasco in the 1st District, but that was known and tabled by the State Committee the day prior. It was on the agenda, although it was sent back to the State Committee.
There was a lot of cussing and fighting, nastiness and bad manners – all directed AT supporters of Ron Paul, not coming FROM us. I was personally threatened, and one woman actually tried to have a sheriff remove me as I attempted to clear something up with Convention Chair Nuttle. It was crazy. I know of three instances where Paul supporters were physically attacked by Romney supporters. I know of zero where Paul supporters attacked Romney supporters.
Why don’t you ask why Rule 18D was violated and no Roll Call vote was taken for the election of the slate? That’s a HUGE issue. How bout the lack of a 2/3rd’s majority to adjourn? Since that didn’t happen, HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE gathered in the parking lot for several hours to finish business.
There are so many stories here I hardly know where to begin. The GOP should be ashamed of itself – those who write the rules, broke them. I missed my youngest daughter’s 3rd birthday party to stand in futility at a microphone and try to hold the convention to the rules. How can we call ourselves the party that stands for the Rule of Law if we can’t even follow our own rules?
Did I mention credentials didn’t get done til after 3, and at 5 they started shutting down lights and closing the room down? Perhaps this story needs more telling, Mike.
Steve – I know you were busy and couldn’t be everywhere at all times, but all the cussing, fighting, nastiness and bad manners I heard and endured was coming FROM the Paulies.
The Rules of the Convention that were adopted by a majority vote did not require a roll call vote on the slate of delegates unless you consider a ballot vote to be the same as a roll call vote.
I know that you will hate to hear this, but a number of Paulies voted to adjourn. Not because they wanted to adjourn, but because they were so busy yelling (obsenities included) that they didn’t realize that they were standing for the Yes to adjourn and sitting for the No to adjourn. Crazy but true. When you take the majority that wanted to adjourn and add in all the Paulies who unknowingly voted to adjourn, the total is a large number of the delegation.
Hundreds of people gathering in the parking lot weren’t enough to take away the proper adjournment of the Convention or to be a quorum of delegates. So please don’t talk about standing up for the Rules when you tend to violate them as much as anyone else to get your way. When you are in the minority,you do tend to lose, especially when combativeness is your game.
I was satisfied with the outcome of the State Convention. I walked away happy that a majority of Oklahomas do believe in liberty and a representative form of government.
Incredible. This report could not be more inaccurate or slanted. Marc Nuttle did not maintain order and flagrantly violated the Party’s rules. One among many was the rule requiring that the election of delegates be by roll-call vote. Oklahoma Republican Party Rule 18(d) reads, “Election of the Delegates-at-Large and Alternates-at- Large shall be by roll call vote.” Yet Nuttle refused to hold such a vote. Instead, he held a standing vote, which in addition to failing to comply with the rule, does not take into account the county-by-county vote apportionment, which can greatly affect the results. Consequently, the delegates mentioned in the article were not properly elected under the rules until later that day after the convention was forced to reconvene in the parking lot of the hotel.
The Paul supporters did not go to the parking lot to “protest” – they went there to continue the convention that had not been legally adjourned.
The article speaks of foul language and combative attitudes of people on Twitter who were likely not even in Oklahoma, yet the article makes no mention of the physical assault and battery that took place against Paul supporters during the convention. In one instance, an unsuspecting Paul supporter was punched in the back of the head and the assailant had to be taken away by police. Many more Paul supporters were pushed, shoved, screamed at, had things thrown at them, were called “trash”, and were generally treated with hatred and cruelty for having the temerity to stick by their candidate this late in the Presidential race.
This is shoddy reportage if I have ever seen it. This article completely misses the real story and fails to relate the most salient events of the day, instead focusing on non-events and distorting the more important ones.
I wasn’t there and I don’t know what happened, but the fact that the INSANE Paulbots didn’t get their way brings me great joy.
A roll call vote is just that – a vote based on the roll. A standing vote does not qualify. It must be a county by county vote (or state by state at national, think of each state standing up and saying “Mr. Chairman, the Great State of PickYourFavorite, home of various things we find time consuming when you list them but you seem to feel we want to hear them so you keep talking, casts 43 ballots for Mickey Mouse!). It’s a pretty clear rule, and one that was done for National Committeeman. Hard to have a visual of 2/3rds ready to adjourn when Tulsa County is behind a screen door because the room is being shut down…
Steve – I understand the roll call vote. According to the convention rules, a roll call vote was not required for the slate of delegates. It was required for elected officials. No one contested this part of the rules.
Also, according to the article by David Tackett, all delegates were visible at some places in the Convention Hall during the vote for adjournment.
I was at the convention and there are a few things I would like to point out to all of those who complain of it being an unfair convention.
1) The Credentials report was adopted. any additional changes to that are considered amending the report. Honestly you can never have a complete accurate count of delegates present unless you lock the doors and don’t allow anyone to leave. There was no voter fraud every single person who received a ballot had the proper credentials and were delegates it’s just that the electronic software that was used to process that had some glitches in it, etc. and therefore didn’t properly reflect the true amount of delegates.
2) So you didn’t think the covention chairman was fair….well there was the opportunity to offer someone else up to that position but no person was nominated and he was overwhelmingly approved to be the chair….so, can’t complain on that front.
3) You keep talking and talking about the state party rules and rule 18 and all that jazz….well, the fact of the matter is, you should have challenged the rules of the convention not the rules of the state party. However with that being said there was a stand up vote that approved the ruling of the chair to approve the slate without a roll call vote, therefore at that time there was no recourse you can take other than to take it to the RNC and challenge it.
4) When it came to convening. We had to be out by 5. It was put on the website, in the agenda, and in the mail pieces the time of adjournment….so, in the future if you want to make sure that everything gets heard maybe there shouldn’t be so many motions and points of orders made to take up time(like the point of order that the chair didn’t ask for nominations and then the guy didn’t even have a nomination) ….course I believe that was done on purpose with the hope that the “non Ron Paul” people would leave so then there would be enough people to get the vote you wanted. Well that strategy failed.
Bottom line is you didn’t have the numbers so even if everything went according to the way you wanted rule wise and such you still would have lost due to being outnumbered.
As for what happened after the convention outside, well….. I have friends that stayed and were a part of that deal and they say that there was way less than 400 people there and you would have needed at least 700 or more there to have a quorum. So, yeah…not a continued convention, sorry.
And one final note, I am not a Romney supporter.
The ignorance of party rules here is stunning. State Party Rule 18(d) requires that at-large delegates and alternates be elected by roll-call vote. Rule 16(f) states that State Party rules are superior to any convention rules.
But even by convention rules, the slate of delegates was to be voted by ballot, which it was not. To change that would have required a motion to amend the rules, and would require a 2/3rds vote to succeed.
No matter how you look at it, the rules were flagrantly disregarded and the delegates and alternates were not properly elected.
As for delaying the convention, I am amazed that you lay this at the feet of a man who didn’t have a horse in the race, but was trying to look out for the rights of others who may have had nominations to make. That took all of 30 seconds, max. Yet the credentialing took FIVE HOURS and delayed the vote on the rules for several hours. But you blame a simple 30-second point of order? Do you honestly think that man’s plan was that by calling a point of order for a few seconds, that everyone was going to go home? That is just silly.
It was said that since nobody nominated a different convention chair, that we can’t complain about his flagrant disregard for the rules. Really? So you think that by mere virtue of having been elected, that he has license to violate rules all he wants?
Finally, no matter what David Tackett says, review the video record yourself, the dividers made it impossible for the chair to see the Tulsa delegation and others on the other side of the room. There was a gap in the divider, but not enough to have a good, unobstructed view of those sitting on that side of the room. A standing vote was a sham.
As for the outdoor portion of the convention, you are incorrect. There were at least about 400 people, if not more. The only formally adopted delegate roll was, I believe, 1221, or perhaps 1243. Pollard’s “updates” were never adopted by the body or amended into the credentials report. A quorum would then have been 622. However, under ORP Rule 19(b), a quorum is deemed to exist until fewer than 2/3rds of the original quorum remain, making the magic number 415. It doesn’t matter, however, because no quorum call was ever called, so the convention was presumed to have quorum – which it probably did.
I think the problem here is that people have become so used to playing loosey-goosey with the rules, that when a few people come in and insist that they be followed faithfully, you don’t know what to think and assume it’s some kind of malicious conspiracy. That’s okay, we’re going to keep teaching you year after year, until you finally understand.