It's already happening...

...delegates to the National Convention. This means go to your precinct, congressional district, senate district, county, state, etc. conventions. Go to every convention and work your absolute hardest to get to the next level, until you become a delegate to the national convention. Damn the media, damn the GOP, damn the McCainiacs....if a significant number of Ron Paul supporters get in as both NATIONAL DELEGATES & ALTERNATES we can pull this off. Read this great article below from Mrs. Schlafly and see how in the 1880 convention, the President was picked on the 36TH BALLOT!

Even if you are allegedly bound to vote for McCainiac or some other candidate, you may vote for whomever you please. At worst you will be told you can't be a delegate again. WHO CARES?

Dark horse looks good in GOP presidential race
Phyllis Schlafly
Human Events
December 26, 2007

Although the next presidential election won't take place until November 2008, and the nominating conventions won't convene until next August and September, the media have been covering the candidates all through 2007 as though they were running a horse race. What is it about presidential politics that evokes horse-race metaphors?

The media have designated and re-designated the Republican "front-runner": John McCain, then Mitt Romney, then Rudy Giuliani, then Mike Huckabee. The media are also speculating whether Hillary Clinton will lose her front-runner status to Barack Obama.

Next summer, the presidential nominee of each party will take the reins of his party, and hopefully then of government. He — or she — will choose a "running mate," and the losers will become footnotes in history books as "also-rans."

The most fascinating horse-race metaphor that might emerge in this campaign is the "dark horse," a well-recognized label for a long-shot candidate who was not in what is now called the top tier. A dark horse's chance of winning the nomination depends on a deadlock among the leading candidates who are unable to cross the finish line with a majority of delegates.

Early in 2007, the media were confidently announcing that the presidential nominations of both parties would be locked up in the early primaries. It now appears just as likely that the early primaries will confirm the fact that Republicans are divided.

Each of the five top-tier Republican candidates has received endorsements from important Republicans, some of whom have state Republican organizations to deliver delegates, and some with large grass-roots constituencies. No poll shows any of these candidates with anywhere near a majority of Republican support.

A recent New York Times/CBS News poll reported that none of the Republican candidates is viewed favorably by even half the Republican electorate. There is no clear leader: Giuliani was the choice of 22 percent of respondents, Huckabee of 21 percent, Romney of 16 percent, and McCain and Thompson each had 7 percent.

Among Republican respondents, 76 percent say they could still change their minds about whom to support. Maybe that's because all five leading candidates are globalists and none of them has a solution for the problem of millions of Americans who have lost jobs or had their wages depressed because of unfair trade agreements, outsourcing of jobs overseas, and insourcing foreign workers.

A book of political history from 2003 called "Dark Horse: The Surprise Election and Political Murder of President James A. Garfield" (Carroll & Graf, $16) might provide the model. Kenneth D. Ackerman tells the fascinating story of how the 1880 Republican National Convention in Chicago deadlocked, with three sets of delegates unwilling to abandon their first choice, and a totally unexpected non-candidate dark horse named James A. Garfield was nominated on the 36th ballot and then elected president.

Sen. James G. Blaine of Maine was the first major name placed in nomination, soon followed by New York powerhouse Sen. Roscoe Conkling's nomination of war hero Gen. U.S. Grant for a third term. The third major contender was Treasury Secretary John Sherman, nominated by his friend and campaign manager Sen.-elect James A. Garfield.

The first ballot on Monday, June 7, produced Grant, 304; Blaine, 284; Sherman, 93; and a handful of votes for minor candidates. All were well short of the 379 votes needed to win.

Over the next four hours, delegates cast 18 ballots, every one with a full roll call of states. They broke for dinner and then came back to cast 10 more ballots, despite the heat, the tedium and the hard benches on which they sat.

All three blocs seemed equally determined to stand by their man. After those 28 ballots, Grant's total of 304 votes had grown to 307, Blaine's 284 had shrunk to 279, and Sherman's 93 to 91.

When the convention resumed on Tuesday morning to cast the 29th ballot, Sherman's total jumped to 116, but that boomlet faded on the next ballot.

The break came on the 34th ballot, late in the alphabetic roll call of states, when Wisconsin suddenly announced "Sixteen votes for James A. Garfield." Sitting in the Ohio delegation, Garfield jumped to his feet and tried to make a point of order that he had not consented to have his name placed in nomination, but the convention chairman gaveled him down and refused to let him speak.

The 34th ballot totaled 312 for Grant, 275 for Blaine, 107 for Sherman, and 17 for Garfield. On the 35th ballot, Indiana and Maryland switched to Garfield, giving him a new total of 50 votes.

The roll call for the 36th ballot became high drama. State after state switched to Garfield. Then Maine announced that all its votes had moved from Blaine to Garfield.

When the balloting reached Ohio, Sherman ceded his support to Garfield, who then won the Republican nomination with 395 votes.

Could Republicans be so divided going into the 2008 Convention that a dark horse could win the nomination?

http://www.humanevents.co...

Lame you gotta write him in. Cool you can select him for your 2nd 3rd and 4th picks aswell.... =P

"I also pledge that I will not vote for any other prospective or confirmed GOP presidential nominee whose record or positions are that of a RINO — including a failure to follow the lead of the Republican Party's great mentor Ronald Wilson Reagan, and its historical founder, Abraham Lincoln, in commitment to conservative principle. In this period of great national decision, I pledge to reject all adherents of pandering populism and disproportionate statism, as well as advocates of extremist and irresponsible libertarianism (which would deregulate marriage, drugs, pornography, etc., and which advocate virtual isolationism in the face of the War on Terror) — and I pledge that I will only vote for a GOP nominee who clearly has made the Reagan Republicanism endorsed in the GOP platform a foundation and guide of his public service."

I would never support anyone who supports the war on drugs or continuing the maddness in the middle east. "Isolationism" is an incorrect terms also. They must adhere to the Constitution or we will just roll the problem back a little and not fix it. Reagen supported Ron Paul.

I voted by writing Ron Paul in as 1st. I left all others blank

OpenGOPConvention.com is a project of the federal Patriot PAC, and in the coming days and weeks we will be mounting an aggressive campaign of media ads and drumming up grassroots support all over the country with one goal in mind:

… TO STOP THE NOMINATION OF JOHN MCCAIN!

But That's Not All…

What happens if John McCain can secure the magical number of 1191. That makes his nomination inevitable, right?

WRONG!

**The delegates to the GOP Convention are bound by certain rules and THOSE RULES CAN BE CHANGED BY THE DELEGATES THEMSELVES!**

Remember the Democratic National Convention of 1980? Senator Ted Kennedy's supporters — seeking to unbind the convention delegates ON THE FIRST BALLOT — actually mounted a credible challenge to the rules.

Of course the challenge failed because a majority of the delegates were already committed in their hearts and minds to President Jimmy Carter.

But McCain is no incumbent president. He's not loved! Ask yourself, what would happen if the delegates actually had the opportunity NOT TO VOTE FOR JOHN MCCAIN ON THE FIRST BALLOT?

Did I miss something here? OK they are all freaked out about lefty McCain being their boy, then go on to list the 'dark horse' 'conservative' alternative candidates to McCain to vote on in a preference poll, then go on to bitterly expose the media ignoring poor Alan Keyes...can you imagine such a thing? He and his 7 supporters are still running dammit! The nerve of those liberal media stooges they've shut him out!

The capper is that the only real conservative, who just happens to have an active campaign, who is the probably the most media ignored political figure in history and dwarfs the total primary votes gotten by the whole list combined isn't even on their list - you'd have to write him in! Talk about being ignored - and by your own party lest the media.

I haven't even heard of a couple of those guys in their poll.

Wrote in RP and didn't make any other choices, too.

while looking at that website, I noticed while reading the pledge, that the group would not support the ideas that Dr. Paul espouses. Apparently they have something against libertarianism and any flavor of it. Oh well, it will still be McInsane or Ron Paul at the convention.

No, they didn't leave Ron Paul off the voting. He was listed as one of the Republicans still running at the top, and that is why he was not included in the list at the bottom.

so I wrote him in and didn't select any other ones for 2nd, 3rd, etc...Just Ron Paul and I typed it in all CAPS!

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. James Madison