Challenging Romney's Poppycock Platform

It's not over for Ron Paul, not even close. While he understands that he will not be winning the GOP nomination, he continues to stay in the race. Could he possibly have an ulterior motive? He does not have nearly enough delegates to win but perhaps enough to cause a ruckus for Romney. There is speculation that he may be trying to divide the party at the GOP convention, a time when the party should instead be unify behind a single candidate (Romney). "They could start off by calling for a floor vote, and then jump up in blocs to nominate Paul, one state after another. He isn’t likely to actually get the nomination that way, but multiple states clamoring for him would embarrass the party and make things more difficult for Romney in the months before November" (Dwoskin, 2012). In order to mitigate the disaster, Romney might have to provide concessions to Ron. This may require Romney incorporating some of his [Ron] ideas into his campaign.With Ron's devout supports  and delegates (aka "Ron bots"), they have the power to make a splash at the convention.

This race is not even about winning for Ron, he instead seems most concerned with getting the libertarian ideology out there and to promote his ideals since they are so much different from both the Republican and the Democrat parties. This promotion is done in hopes that it will not just gather some of the true conservatives, but to also get the attention of the independents are still floundering over who to vote for. He wants to instill some of these "new" ideas into the republican party platform for (hopefully) this upcoming presidential election (Harris, 2012). He seems to call Romney's ideals hokum because they do not subscribe to a true constitutionalist perspective and insists on replacing Romney's ideas with his own. I suppose all we have left to do is take a ring-side seat and watch a (hopefully) intense GOP convention throw down take place. Ron is willing to fight to the end and determined to drastically influence the party:

 “That’s the fallback. If we don’t pull it off and we’re not in first place, yes, that would be a good goal...I run to win, and I have won a lot, but we also want to help direct the party and the country in a certain way, so that would be a very, very positive strategy to have an influence on the party” (Good, 2012).

                                                           Works Cited

Dwoskin, Elizabeth. "How Ron Paul Could Mess With Romney at the GOP Convention ." Bloomberg Business. Bloomberg, 5/7/2012. Web. 8 May 2012. <http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-07/how-ron-paul-could-mess-with-romney-at-the-gop-convention>

Good , Chris. "Ron Paul’s Not-So-Secret Plot for the GOP Convention." ABC News. ABC News, 5/7/22012. Web. 8 May 2012. <http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/ron-pauls-not-so-secret-plot-for-the-gop-convention/>
  
Harris, Paul. "How Ron Paul's far-reaching delegate strategy is starting to pay off." The Guardian, UK. The Guardian, 5/4/2012. Web. 8 May 2012. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/04/ron-paul-delegate-strategy-gop-nomination>