http://ronpaul2008.typepad.com/…

With the results of many of the “Super Tuesday” primaries and caucuses now finalized, the Ron Paul campaign is now projecting that it has at least 42 delegates to the national convention secured.

While much of the focus in yesterday’s Super Tuesday contests focused on preference poll numbers, Ron Paul caucus-goers were focused on securing delegates to the national convention.  With dedicated supporters and an organization focused purely on securing delegates, the campaign has secured more delegates to the national convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul than caucus straw polls might otherwise suggest.

According to campaign projections, a minimum of 24 delegates were won in yesterday’s contests.  When added to projected delegates coming from strong showings in Iowa (4), Nevada (8), Louisiana (3) and Maine (3), that brings the total delegate count to 42 delegates or more.

“Our goal has always been to walk into the national GOP convention with as many delegates as possible,” said Ron Paul 2008 campaign manager Lew Moore.  “The number of delegates we won yesterday could very well be the difference in a Convention where no one has a first-ballot majority.  With Dr. Paul’s home state of Texas coming up, we feel we can enter the convention with a substantial number of delegates.”

In an agreement first reported by West Virginia television station WSAZ, three Ron Paul delegates were secured through an agreement with the Mike Huckabee campaign at the West Virginia state convention early Tuesday.  Ron Paul delegates to the state convention swung their sizable support to Huckabee – putting Huckabee over the top – in exchange for the delegates.

According to campaign projections from last night’s results at least 3 delegates were won in Alaska, 5 delegates were won in North Dakota, 9 delegates were won in Minnesota, and 4 delegates were won in Colorado.

Additionally the results of the Louisiana Caucus may still change in favor of Ron Paul, where an ongoing legal challenge may result in most of that state’s delegates going towards Ron Paul after state GOP officials violated their own rules to improperly put delegates from other campaigns on the ballots.

Still 4th of 4 but we could pick up enough to force a brokered convention. Nick Bradley over at LRC has an interesting and optimistic projection.

1. After all the delegates are allocated in California, McCain will have well over 700 delegates; he won all but two of the counties (lost by a hair to Romney in Fresno and Shasta), so he should get all 173 delegates. In order to secure the nomination, he’ll need about half of the remaining 1,035 delegates, an unlikely feat.

2. As a result of the delegate reality for McCain, he will take Huckabee onto his ticket at a brokered convention that turns out to be little more than a formality. As the delegate count currently stands, McCain-Huckabee needs less than 300 delegates out of the remaining 1,035 to secure the nomination, less than 30%. I cannot envision any scenario where Paul and Romeny score enough delegates over the rest of the primaries to prevent a McCain-Huckabee majority.

3. If Huckabee has not already agreed to accept McCain’s VP slot, he will do so in a heartbeat. First, I have read repeatedly that McCain has made a private pledge to serve only one term, giving Huckabee a cleared field for 2012 if McHuckabee wins in November. If McHuckabee loses (which it probably will), Huckabee is “alive” for 2012, just like Edwards was for 2008 despite being out of office; Huckabee can go around the counrty for four years, extolling the virtues of the FairTax (during a severe recession, no less) and building grassroots support for a 2012 run.

4. Many conservatives will absolutely revolt over a McCain-Huckabee ticket, and will sit out the general or become suicide voters” and pull the lever for the democrat. This conservative angst, however, provides an excellent opening for a true conservative in the Goldwater-Taft mold to lead the exodus out of the party — Ron Paul. And if Hillary, who most democrats see as generally pro-war, is the democratic nominee, many of them will throw their lots in with the disgruntled conservatives and support Paul. Under such a scenario, Paul should have enough support get into the debates and take home a sizable chunk of the vote in Nobember. If Bloomberg jumps in and slices off the nanny state vote, probably split 60-40 to Hillary over McCain, Paul may even have a chance at winning. At this point, there aren’t many other options left.

I’m not sure if that or a 3rd party run starting after February makes more sense. Without knowing if Bloomberg or Nader will run it’s hard to decide. A 3rd party Paul run could pick up a decent chuck of votes but I doubt the 18% that Perot was able to get. The problem is time. By the time the R’s pick their guy the L’s will have chosen theirs. At that point I’m sure it’s too late to get yourself on the ballots anyway. I want to be able to vote for Paul in the general election… I just don’t know whether the almost guaranteed ballot access of the Libertarians is worth giving up the possible brokered convention where the revolution’s message could be argued at length and could grow the RLC and the libertarian wing of the party. While I appreciate what 3rd parties do and myself a member of the local Manhattan Libertarian Party, I believe given the current political state of affairs the path of least resistance for shrinking the state is by utilizing one of the two major parties. That or facilitate the Republican party’s downfall and absorb into the Libertarian party the libertarian wing or create a new liberty oriented party from it. That would allow traditional Reagan like conservatives from the LP to join that party and the LP could become what the Radicals want it to be.

There are a lot of people online going nuts about Paul’s 8% result in New Hampshire yesterday. I have to admit I’m surprised by the results. RealClearPolitics.com has 6 polls’ numbers and their average. The averages look like this:

• McCain: 31.8%
• Romney: 28.2%
• Huckabee: 12.2%
• Giuliani: 9.3%
• Paul: 8.2%
• Thompson: 2.2%

What we got was:

• McCain: 37.02%
• Romney: 31.48%
• Huckabee: 11.20%
• Giuliani: 8.53%
• Paul: 7.23%
• Thompson: 1.21%
• Hunter: 0.51%
• Other: 2.40%

Huckabee, Giuliani, Paul and Thompson look pretty close to the polls which were of likely Republican voters. Is it really the case that the Independents flocked to McCain? I was expecting that Paul would have at least gotten enough Independents to keep his percentile. The events I’ve attended the independents, new voters and Democrats who switched outweighed those who where originally from the Republican party or Libertarian party. I would have suspected that he would have gotten at least 8% of the independents so he’d be at around 8% in the end. It is the Live Free or Die state… and Iowa which can hardly be considered libertarian gave him 10%. It’s the state that gave Pat Buchanan the win in 1996 and Buchanan has been speaking really well of Paul (though no official endorsement.) It all feels a bit weird but I’ve not seen any evidence of foul play. Sutton township accidentally reported zero votes for Paul when it was 31. Shit happens. http://ronrox.com/paulstats.php shows differences between votes counted by hand and votes handled by machines. It is interesting that Paul does a full 2% better in hand counted polls. McCain does 2.87% better and Huckabee 2.65% better. Romney does 7.51% worse. I’d like to see the economic breakdown of those areas which hand counted vs machine. But even with this I’m in no way convinced this means anything. I’ve yet to see anything to indicate foul play. I think it’s much more likely that we screwed up. “[A] late campaign start, late arrival by volunteers, an MSM media black-out, seeing your volunteers spending the last 36 hours of the campaign protesting FOX News and chasing down NeoCon radio hosts instead of focusing on the get-out-the-vote effort, the weather-induced record turnout that allowed the wishy-washy to water down die-hard voters, and so on and so on.” However, as Nick Bradley indicates, Among total votes cast Paul is in 4th at 8.6% above Giuliani at 7.0%. I don’t suspect to continue however given he’s only got max 5% nationwide and if he’s not getting delegates it doesn’t matter. So unless Paul supporters go mascaraed as supporters of McCain and Romney we are SOL.

My worry now is that Paul will decide not to run 3rd party or will not run on the Libertarian ticket. He has till May to become a Libertarian Party member in order to be a candidate. If he does not end up on the Libertarian ticket he would probably run Independent and therefore against the Libertarian and Constitutionalist candidates instead of uniting them. I think it would be in the best interest of the country, Ron Paul and the Libertarian party to have Paul on it’s ticket.

Anyway… here is Alex Jones going off about the info I’ve talked about:

In other but related news… rumor is Bill Richardson is going to drop out of the race soon.

This one has been floating around for a couple weeks I believe but this video does a better job of explaining it than the original clip I came across. I’ve read many reports of similar things. Polls just leaving him out, some putting him on a second page even when their is room on the first, and this where they remove the polled from future polling for attempting to choose something besides the main set.

This is the most bias interview I’ve ever seen of Ron Paul on any of the news stations. (I think only when he was on the Morton Downey Jr.’s show was worse.) As Nick Bradley over at the Lew Rockwell blog said:

FOX News jumped the shark today during their ‘FOX and Friends’ interview w/ Congressman Paul this morning. After starting 10 minutes early and asked him about Huckabee, but cut to commercial abruptly afte Paul made a comment about fascism (before Paul could clarify his comments). When they came back, the hostess asked Paul a series of “one-answer questions” for about a minute then ended the interview. FOX then moved on to a hard-hitting story about a dog who had 17 puppies, and showed a trailer for a ‘Hannity an Colmes’ interview with Alan Keyes (!)