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Subscribe to RSSTAMPA, Fla. -- Republican leaders pushed through contentious changes to delegate rules over the objection of conservatives and supporters of Texas Rep. Ron Paul.
Loud boos erupted Tuesday on the floor of the Republican National Convention as RNC Chairman Reince Priebus and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, ruled that a voice vote was sufficient to approve credentialing rules for delegates at future conventions.
Shannon Stapleton / Reuters
Delegates shout in protest over changes in Republican party rules that would restrict the impact of grassroots movements, before a vote to adopt the new rules during the second session of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, August 28, 2012.
Chants that sounded like "Seat them now!" did battle with chants of "U-S-A" from supportive delegates seeking to shout the protestors down.
The rules change essentially tightens party control over the manner in which delegates are allocated and bound to candidates.
A delegate rule change by RNC Chairman Reince Priebus and House Speaker John Boehner was approved despite the vocal objections of conservatives and supporters of Texas Rep. Ron Paul at the Republican National Convention.
The proposal prompted frustration from some supporters of Paul, whose campaign was able to appeal to the somewhat arcane rules of delegate allocation to win a majority of four states' delegations, despite having failed to win a single nominating contest.
Other conservatives -- including 2008 vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin -- had protested the move as a power play to shut out grassroots conservatives.
As Priebus and Boehner brought up the controversial rules change for a voice vote, supporters replied with loud "ayes," and almost equally vocal "noes."
When Boehner determined, in his capacity as the convention's permanent chairman, that the ayes had won it, cheers and boos mixed together in the convention hall.
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The Delegate Rule Changes will be to the GOP what "Remember The Alamo" was to the Texans!
You mean Grover Rinquist rules.
BTW: As long as we're talking about Grover Norquist, I have always wanted to know: How can so many Republicans blindly follow a man named after a Muppet?
Who owns Fox network ??? I thought it was Ted Turner !! Who is Ted married to ?? I thought it was to a communist that was a traitor to the USA during the Vienam War ! I've seen wanted posters for her to be arrested if she came any where near a military post. SO WHO MIGHT BE A COMMIE ! The owner of FOX might be and so called patriots believe what a communist tv station tells you !!
The owner of Fox is Australian billionaire Rupert Murdoch, dummy.
A lot of people complain about right wing and left wing media. They should be complaining about corporate media.
@ James you have hit the nail on the head, the "corporate media"will never explain how these rule changes affect the grassroots of the Republican Party.
I guess that the moneymen who are spending all this cash figure they don't need the rank and file anymore. All they have to do is come up with entities like Club For Growth and spend money on their chosen candidate...so much for democracy
Christie looks more slovenly than usual. That surprises me, considering the speech that he's making right now is his coming out party.
Sorry, Chris, but you look like you don't take care of yourself, so why should we expect you to take care of the nation?
Christie is banking on Romney losing in November so he himself can run against Hillary in 2016 after Obama's 2nd term is complete.
Maybe by then he'll trim down and not look so bloated.
Still, it's a boring speech.
Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan will have to obey the orders of the Puppet master (Grover Rinquist) or be rejected from the Republican party or silenced like Ron Paul and his followers. They should have shut down this conventions of Rinquist Puppets with mass Libertarian protest and blocked the cause ways until the Republicans party show Ron Paul and his followers some respect.
With Ann Romney's address to the Republicans Convention you get to much information (personal Illness, injury, breast cancer, miss carriages and emotional break downs) and with GOV. Chris Christie you get what happens when you eat to much Crispie Cream. I don't think either address will ever make Mitt (the twit) Romney human and likable. After all he is a alien from another planet.
Well, the Ron Paul supporters have been had once again, this time for good it appears with the rule changes the GOP enacted today.
Gee, I wonder how many times you have to be hoodwinked before you stop going back for more?
The republicans almost destroyed this nation's economy with their voodoo economics and deregulation in 2008. The GOP faithful appear to be ready to go back to those policies, on steriods, even though these policies are proven failures, over and over and over again.
At what point do you face reality, admit you've been had and move on?
Rick Santorum said his father came to this country as an immigrant and that there was no welfare in the 1920s. Well, it wasn't called welfare back then but it was called social services, social welfare or government relief. It did exist in the 20s. Mitt Romney's father, George Romney, was born in Mexico and came to this country in 1912 and the family briefly lived on government relief.
It's funny how the Repubs claim that we do not need big government (looking over their shouldes while they rob the country blind) but how do they suppose our highways were built, by aliens? No. After WW2, the government commissioned road and dam construction which put people to work. Have they ever heard of the New Deal? "The New Deal infused federal funds into programs that affected banks as well as farmers, investors, and industrial workers....Historians generally agree that the infusion of federal funds through the New Deal programs averted a prolonged economic decline but did not pull the country out of the Depression....The federal government continued to promote economic and social stability for a wide range of Americans following World War II. Employment policies for returning veterans, low mortgage interest rates, and subsidies for national highways contributed to the era's economic expansion. Presidents Kennedy and Johnson cultivated this approach most specifically with their education and antipoverty programs. Like the programs that proceeded them, the new services sought to ameliorate social problems created in part by economic and social"
The very government the Repubs want to stay out of way, is the same government that built the road the Repubs drive on.
Apparently the deregulation (or government out of the way) of the financial institutes benefitted the Repubs the most. You know all those mortgage backed securities and derivitives, collapse of Lehman Brothers, banks and other companies, were all due in part to the government not looking over the shoulders of the crooks handling the money.
Can you imagine a casino hiring a bank robber to work in their counting room (where all the cash is counted) with his fellow bank robbers and then walking away and turning off all the security cameras? This is essentially what happened with deregulation. The Repubs are the bank robbers who were allowed to count the money unsupervised and they still want to be unsupervised while they handle your money and raise your taxes while they pay less taxes which means more money for them and less for you. Who's going to know anyway? They're unsupervised.
Ron Paul should take his Libertarian Party and run independent of the Grover Rinquist Republican party. America could use another independent party like the Democratic Party. The Republican party has lost it's power to compete in the American Democracy and govern constitutionally a long time ago. The Democratic party it's Representatives are still controlled by the American people. The Democratic Party is still Pledge to the Constitutions of the United States.
Just a horrible series of speeches tonight. Angry. Disconnected. Contradictory.
...and we still know nothing about the plastic man himself.
Mr. Romney, where are you tax returns? Especially for the year 2008. Felony tax evader, anyone?
you are a pos
PATHETIC!
Hey gang! We really need to get started on the Repeal of the 22nd Amendment, so President Obama can run for a third term.
Barack Obama:
Alias Barry Soetoro pawns himself as Barack Obama, the humanitarian, the POTUS, the campaign for hope and change. But we know better. Barry is a radical Marxist who was raised by Communist parents and Communist grandparents. His mentors were known Communists, his contacts in college were strictly Marxists supporters, Marxist professors and a group of Pakistani activists as stated in his book, "Dreams From My Father".
Barack Obama, tell us about Frank Marshall Davis or Bill Ayers. Surely you remember Mr. Davis. After all, your mother knew him all too well. Mr. Ayers, a known terrorist, responsible for at least a dozen bombings, helped your early Illinois campaign by raising money, thru his organization Underground Weather. Tell us about your trip to Pakistan ('81) with Pakistani Wahid Hamid.
Share with us your ideals of socialism, after all you're a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), referred as the "New Party". Please tell us why you have been influenced by the writings of Karl Marx, the prelude to Communism. Share with us your association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Do you justify this man's message by condemning our country by saying, "God bless America? No, God Damn America"? Was this a forethought supporting your belief in Marxism?
Are these the individuals who have inspired you to public office? Are these the individuals who have inspired you to plot against the United States? Are they the people for whom you've entrusted your Muslim faith?
Please tell us why you mocked the Holy Bible and Jesus' sermon on the mount, calling the sermon a radical message. You have mocked Christianity and this country. Barack Obama, you have betrayed this nation and all its' people. Your skin is dark because of your race, but your soul is darker because of your deception.
United States of America………………you didn't build it Barack Obama.
Got to love all the propaganda. Say it louder someone might believe you.
Boehner is a tool. Typical GOP tactics giving the power to the guys who have money.
you libs have nothing in this floor fight your not going to vote republican any way so shout the h--- up
here is a piece of red meat for you libs,because of this rules change i may stay home we need a strong third party
In the past, the purpose of the conventions was to choose a candidate. But in the Republican party, the power boys play the game the way they want it.
A lot of the Ron Paul delegates were denied access at the door, although they were duly elected as delegates in their home states. They made the trip, went to all the expense of traveling to Tampa, and then were wrongfully denied access.
We do need a third party. I think everyone can agree on that. Maybe Ron Paul can still create a third party. A lot of independents and democrats would vote for him. Certainly all the anti-war people would. In this political climate, he could possibly win as a third party candidate.
Ron Paul was always in the wrong party. He should have switched to the Democrat party a long time ago. The Democrat party has always been inclusive. It has always contained voices from all sides.
I think the Reform Party is still around somewhere, isn't it?
How often do you ever see Republicans booing each other at their convention? This is just one example of why they will lose, they can't even unify their party because of the corruption. Boehner actually changed the rules in the middle of the game and when he got more nays still ruled the way he wanted. I'm surprised this isn't a bigger headline and if I were Obama I'd have at least one add having the Republicans booing Boehner. They claim they can run the country but they can't even unite their own party.
Sitting in the Texas Delegation, I can tell you that the protesting delegates had a legitimate point of order to address. The microphones in every delegation were turned off for the entire convention except for the roll call vote. Points of order were not entertained by Chairman Boehner, which is just wrong. Shouting became necessary because of the conduct of the convention by the chair.
While it was supporters of Ron Paul at the microphone calling for a point of order, most of the Texas delegation was supportive of a roll call vote on the question of adopting the report of the Rules Committee.
Unknown to the media, in this very controlled Convention, roll call votes have to be requested in writing by at least 6 delegations prior to a vote. Also unknown to the media, the reason that there was no debate, was a carefully orchestrated campaign by RNC staff to get trusted delegations to request a "call the previous question" before the motion was ever brought to the floor. This stifled debate on the floor.
These types of rules are "anti-grassroots" and all about putting on carefully staged conventions for the benefit of the media.
While sending a national message is very important, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the duly elected GOP delegates deserve a real convention and not a show.