http://www.opednews.com/…

When Gabe Razzano went to the polling place on Tuesday evening where his mother tried to vote for Ron Paul he was told the same thing, “Ron Paul has dropped out of the race” He was actually shown the display card which by law must hang on the wall and where they had crossed out Ron Paul’s name along with Rudy Giuliani’s. Gabe did the only thing he could do, he called the police. The Freeport Police arrived and asked what the problem was. Gabe proceeded to tell them that his mother tried to vote for Ron Paul but was told she could not because he had dropped out of the race when in fact he had not. The police officer, Sargent Essex, went out to his car, spoke to his superior and came back in to tell Gabe that there was apparently no problem as “Ron Paul had dropped out of the Race”. *Note, when Gabe went to pick up the police report yesterday, the police officer left off the fact that he said that Ron Paul had dropped out of the race. Gabe has 3 witnesses that the police officer said this.

Well, Ron Paul has NOT dropped out of the race for President of the United States of America. And Freeport Long Island is not the only place where this rumor spread……. when Steve Miller, a volunteer poll watcher for Ron Paul, called in a report that a woman was trying to vote for Ron Paul at her polling place, PS 180 in Brooklyn, when her machine malfunctioned. She was given an emergency ballot and was informed by multiple poll workers that she could not vote for Ron Paul because he was not on the ballot. (http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/supertuesday/2008/02/ron-paul-backer-cries-foul-in.html) Eventually she was able to vote when they realized they were wrong. But what about the people who tried to vote earlier?

Eddie in Monroe County, New York, was told by a poll monitor in his county that Ron Paul had been taken off the list. He knew better as he is also a grass-roots volunteer for Ron Paul but he wonders at other’s who were easily convinced by these misinformed people? Tim M in Marlton, NJ –our friendly next door state– had a member of his meet-up come to the rescue by calling the appropriate agencies when a particular polling place in his town were telling the voters that they can’t vote for Ron Paul because he had dropped out. There are more stories. I started a thread on a Ron Paul message board and stories keep coming in but there are already youtubes all over the country of this sort of thing happening in many of the Super-Tuesday states.

On closing….my fifteen year daughter was helping at her high school on Tuesday night for Super Tuesday. When she came home I told her about what was going on with the Ron Paul election fraud situation and her exact words were “Yeah, I heard today from lots of my friends that Ron Paul had dropped out”……..

It may not seem like much but your average voter may very well be convinced to vote otherwise if this occurred. There are other reports in the comments. It’s easy to believe that this occurred because of mallisious intent. However, it’s also just as easy to believe this all happened because of the MSMs blackout of Paul. When he gets less time in a debate to speak than time used to ask questions it’s understandable that some people would think he was out of the race. They simply don’t give him much air time.

http://www.cnn.com/…

Mitt Romney suspended his bid for the Republican presidential nomination Thursday, saying if he continued it would “forestall the launch of a national campaign and be making it easier for Senator Clinton or Obama to win.”

“In this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror. This is not an easy decision. I hate to lose,” the former Massachusetts governor said.

“If this were only about me, I’d go on. But it’s never been only about me. I entered this race because I love America, and because I love America, in this time of war I feel I have to now stand aside for our party and for our country.”

Romney made the announcement Thursday afternoon at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

With Romney out, Sen. John McCain is locked in as the front-runner in the GOP race.

Romney had won 286 delegates in through the Super Tuesday contests, compared with McCain’s 697.

The crowd booed when Romney mentioned McCain, saying, “I disagree with Sen. McCain on a number of issues.”

Interesting. I was really hoping he’d go all the way. This really changes things. Huckabee will either drop out soon and take the VP slot or will try to pick up Romney’s wins. Even though Romney’s main attack on McCain was that he wasn’t conservative enough I very much doubt that the only real conservative in the race will pick up Mitt’s delegates. Some are suggesting that Paul stay in the Republican race AND announce a third party run to both scare the Republicans and appease his supporters. At this point it may not be a bad idea but I’m not sure he can. I’m not familiar enough with the Republican and Libertarian party’s rules to say. An issue would arise with his congressional reelection campaign I would imagine.

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.

http://www.nolanchart.com/…

Do you think it is over for Ron Paul now that Super Tuesday is over? This is an absolute win for Ron Paul. We all always knew that Ron Paul was not going to get enough delegates to steal the nomination. He just needs enough to bring to the convention, which he has. The plan was to make it to a brokered convention, so that the message would get out to all of the republicans. The delegates are in fact uncommitted and many of them may not even know who Ron Paul is.

By having a brokered convention, they will all hear the message, no matter how the media has tried to black him out. The media will have no choice but to show the good doctor and his message as the whole thing will be televised. It will be run by the GOP, not the biased main stream media. This is what we need. Everyone will be watching if there is a brokered convention, Republican and Democrat. Whether the good doctor gets elected or not, the seed of freedom will be planted.

People will start to awaken from their apathy and question the things going on around them. It happened to me, and all it took was hearing Ron Paul speak 1 time. I used to watch Fox News almost exclusively when I was in the Army, and even after I had gotten out. I didn’t even notice that the Neocons were hijacking the Republican Party. After hearing Ron Paul speak in length, and agreeing with so much of what he said, I did some more research on him and the Libertarian Party. I realized that I am not only a conservative Republican, I am also a Libertarian. Ronald Reagan once said, “If you analyze it, I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism”. This speaks volumes to all those who think that Mitt Romney is a conservative and it is laughable to think that McCain is. Having said that, I think that no matter which way you lean politically, we all have a little libertarian in us. We are all Americans. This country was founded on the platform Ron Paul is running his campaign on.

We have gotten far away from what our founding fathers intended for us. But know this; the message absolutely does not have to “finish fourth, along with the candidate”. Not if We the People keep fighting. Even if Ron Paul doesn’t get the nomination, the reason it is about the message is because people die, but the message doesn’t have to. It is up to all of us to carry on that message. If you truly believe in the words that Dr Paul speaks about freedom and liberty, then the message can never “finish fourth”.

This is called the Ron Paul Revolution. Even if Ron Paul isn’t elected, and the status quo continues, then it is still a revolution. I am not saying that people need to arm themselves, but that We the People must rise up and be heard. Let the powers that be know that we will not give up our freedoms anymore. We need to be organized, and that is what this campaign has already started. The meet-ups. The forums. The blogs. The websites. It is already there. This is the framework for our revolution. There are many things we can do to continue the fight.

Don’t Give Up!

Stand proudly behind the Freedom Fighter Dr. Ron Paul.

Lets hope he’s right.

• The Democrat race is still in the air a bit. While Clinton is ahead by nearly 100 delegates there is still many states left and a long time till their convention.
• McCain did well as expected. I think primarily because of the number of winner take all states. Had the delegates been split up it would probably would have been much closer.
• McCain won 9 states. Huckabee 5. Romney 7. Paul 0.
• Accounting for things like what occurred in West Virginia the number of delegates dedicated to each candidate is not quite accurate.
• The available numbers also don’t account for any internal events which may be occurring in the states. I’m not familiar with the workings of all the different states but some use this primary or caucus to vote for state delegates which will at a later time pick national delegates. In those cases the MSM reports the national delegates as if they were already selected. If someone was to drop before the nationals are selected than they could vote differently.
• In several states Giuliani actually got votes. He even beat Paul 5% to 4% in California with 90% reporting. Assuming much of those votes would have gone to McCain it doesn’t look like they would have changed the results in any of the states. Again given the differing systems it’s hard to say for sure. Thompson even got 3% in Tennessee. In that race it could have changed the outcome. Huckabee got 34% and McCain got 32%. I suspect it would have helped Huckabee more than McCain however. I’d like to know if these were protest votes or people who didn’t realize their candidate of choice had dropped. I hope it’s the former.
• There has been several accounts of voting issues with Paul supporters. Three from people I know. Steve Miller in Brooklyn saw issues with voting machines not working and those running the poll said that only 2 Republicans where running and Jim Lesczynski and his wife had changed their party affiliation months ago yet the voting place had them as their old party. Here in NJ they had my girlfriend and I marked as unaffiliated and we had to choose which party to vote for on the spot. No harm but sad that I had changed to R months ago and received confirmation saying as much.
• Paul did well in states he was expected to do well in but not as well as some thought. 3rd in Alaska is disappointing given the level of support that was expected. He was the number 1 fundraiser there. In Montana Paul was again the number 1 fundraiser with more than twice what Romney in second raised. Yet Romney won 38% of the state delegates vs Paul’s 25%. Unfortunately Montana is a winner takes all state and the delegates are apparently required to vote for that individual. It’s even more interesting in North Dakota where Paul again was the largest fundraiser with Romney raising the least yet Romney won the majority with Paul a close 3rd with 21% to McCain’s 23%. Both get the same number of delegates as does Huckabee with his 4th place 20%.
• He also did worse in some states where he was polling last but with higher percentages than he actually received.

Paul generally got spanked but that was expected. The race is still not over and even with McCain in the lead he’s only 60% the way to the nomination. Obviously money does not mean votes. As a movement we need to better target the public. I truly believe the MSM did us great harm in this race and we need to figure out a way to deal with that in the future. The counties around the several states where Paul won or did well should be analyzed and replicated. I don’t believe there was anything particularly special about those voters it was how we advertised and presented our candidate to them. We need to convince people not only of his platform but his electability. As much as we hate that that is a major component to the average voters decision it’s reality and we need to counteract the MSM putdowns and writeoffs. Spend less money on blimps and more on newspaper, radio and TV ads. More articles to the editor which aren’t defensive and complaining about being left out but offensive and comparative and explains why our policies are right and better for the average voter. While we may lose this battle the fact we are able to get such high numbers in some areas of the nation should give us encouragement. In local and national elections were we are targeting much smaller audiences we have a better shot at getting freedom fighters in office. Murray Sabrin’s campaign for Senate has been able to get more money than they where asking for from 47 states. That kind of support will hopefully help get those people elected. Also as a libertarian candidate we’ve gotten a low of 3% and high of 25%. This is just unheard of in the Libertarian Party generally. Nationally Paul is pushing 7%-9% from what I’ve seen. That’s really huge. We do have an audience we just need to approach them. We probably have a larger audience we just need to get by the MSM’s attacks and blackout. On a local level that’s much easier.

It’s going to be interesting to see what happens when and if Huckabee or even Romney drop out. It seems to me that those supporting them would be hard pressed to support “liberal” John McCain. If Paul does not drop and seeks the Libertarian ticket he could possibly pick up quite a few delegates. I understand that is a fairly unlikely situation but I’d love to see it just to gage what and why people choose a candidate.

To leave on a more optimistic note, A Scorecard You Won’t Find on Fox News:

Supporter Loren C. sends in this excellent summary of what Ron Paul has achieved so far.

A friend of mine asked me tonight, “Should Ron Paul just quit? I never hear of him on the news so he can’t be doing very well today (Super Tuesday).” Here is my reply to him:

I don’t care what the liberal media is saying, he has,

2nd place in Nevada

2nd place in Louisiana (possibly first once they get it sorted out)

2nd place in Montana

2nd place in Maine

3rd place in Utah

3rd place in North Dakota

There is about 21 more states left to vote,

He has plenty of money,

No one has even close to enough delegates to take the nomination,

He has the only true Republican stance on the issues,

He is the only candidate who believes our government should follow ALL of the Constitution,

Quit?

Not even close. Keep fighting, Ron Paul is!

Well said. And while the momentum John McCain has been gaining lately may appear daunting, Ron Paul supporters are the ones who should be least intimidated by it, because as the other, fraudulent alternatives to John McCain fail one by one — Mitt Romney is certainly on the ropes after tonight, especially if, as appears to be the case, he loses California to McCain — the real alternative to McCain-ism, Ron Paul, will only become more attractive to conservative Republican voters.

Indeed, it’s interesting to note that so many of the states McCain won tonight were blue states which any Republican (except the antiwar Dr. Paul) will have a hard, if not impossible, time winning in November. And despite his wins tonight, McCain does not have a majority of Republican National Delegates, so the fight for the nomination is still very much on.

For Ron Paul preferably. It would be most appreciated. In NJ he should be in column 2 after Rudy Giuliani (no longer in the race) and before Fred Thompson (also no longer running.)

CNN was at my polling place but I didn’t see any reporter around. Before voting for Ron Paul I walked around the precinct putting Ron Paul door hangers on people’s front doors as a last minute attempt to convert voters. We’ll see.