Saturday, February 11, 2012

Rachel's SCOOP: Paul's Strategy Is to Force A Brokered Convention

As the Beltway Media burrowed into their political racing forms trying to unravel the form, condition, and class analysis that will reveal the next race winner in this field of GOP candidates, Rachel was seeking her edge away from the beaten path of Idiot punditry. The Beltway Media has studiously ignored her, a function of unacceptable gender and politics with a generous coating of fear and loathing, as she was unlocking the secrets of Ron Paul's strategy and intention by delving deep into the weeds of the new GOP caucus rules which her colleague, former RNC Chairman Michael Steele, helped to craft. Amazingly, in an exchange between Lawrence and a guest pundit about this selfsame process, the pundit revealed somewhat disingenuously, that a "brokered convention" was what Steele told him he'd hope to achieve with the new rules; to which Lawrence retorted, "Thank You, Michael Steele!"

Yet Lawrence never followed up and asked the obvious, BEGGING question: "WHY"? Why would Michael Steele craft new proportional delegate caucus rules, with less winner-take-all primaries, that  increase the likelihood of a brokered convention. It's one thing for the Party to try and manage its nominating process with rules designed to prevent an 'outlier' or weak candidate (for the general election) from locking up the Republican nomination early. It's quite another to hope for a "brokered convention" which is, by definition, an expression of the Party's EPIC failure to pick a nominee before the convention rolls around, through the orderly participation of its electorate.

The advent of more primaries and caucuses are intended, particularly, to prevent the old ways and politics of smoke-filled rooms and party bosses that used to select nominees away from the public eye. Instead, the modern political convention is meant to showcase the party and candidates in an endless parade of speeches, testimonials, and political pageantry carefully choreographed by studio professionals to put their best "product" forward before the public. There is scarcely any drama or platform fights and, please, no insurgencies or coups, much to the media's chagrin. All of this so the delegates can leave the convention united behind their nominees and pumped up for November.

Not anymore, it seems.

So what's this about a brokered convention!? What was Michael Steele thinking? No wonder the Republican Party replaced him with a guy named Reince Priebus, who is notorious for this:


It should be noted that the new party bosses, of course, are the secret billionaire donors behind the SuperPacs — and the flamboyant billionaires who choose openly to flaunt their power to buy candidates and elections, proudly applauding their thoroughbreds in the winners circle as their pictures are taken. But that's oats for another story.

My initial reaction to the pregnant disclosure of Michael Steele's unfathomable stated intention to produce a "brokered convention" in crafting the new rules for caucus and primary states was, "what kind of WEED are Lawrence and his guest smoking?"... that they should so nonchalantly drop such a glaring revelation, then disregard it as one huge hanging chad question mark and mysterious unresolved issue for viewers to decode. MSNBC, here's your chance to make Steele's circus hiring partway useful: ASK HIM. In the meantime I'm left with this smooth segue pondering whether to deliberately misspell the name of Rachel's guest, a "senior adviser" to the Ron Paul campaign, who has the look of a pothead in his youth, and a name that must be a real icebreaker and conversation starter. Here's Rachel outsmarting 99% of her Beltway Media colleagues, with good deductive reasoning matched to something they're too lazy to partake in — old fashioned investigative research. Think Dr. House making the connections no one else can see, on his whiteboard. Heeere's Rachel:

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