State GOP convention notes -- national delegate selection and Kelleher

A couple of items from the GOP state convention:

The national convention delegates have been named -- as noted in an earlier post here on MH, they were the slate of delegates and alternates recommended by the delegate selection committee.

Dave Hart, the Ron Paul coordinator wasn't happy that none of the official slate were Ron Paul supporters. He has a point -- but only to a point. It is traditional, once there is a settled nominee, to send a slate of delegates for that nominee to show party unity. You can bet your bottom dollar that most of the delegates going to Minneapolis to vote for John McCain did not have McCain as their first choice at the beginning of the campaign season. The slate appears to be heavy with known Romney and Huckabee supporters.

So a question for Hart would be this: did any Ron Paul supporters submit applications to be national convention delegates and say that while they were Paul supporters, they are now willing to go the convention to vote for and be supportive of the party's nominee? One doubts that if Steve and Cindy Daines had announced their intention to vote for Mike Huckabee at the national convention (Daines was the Huckabee state coordinator,) that they would have been selected as delegates.

Alternatively, did Hart approach either the nominating committee or the McCain campaign, offering to negotiate a reasonable split of the delegation -- based either on Paul's share in the caucus (25%) or in the primary (20%,) perhaps? And in return, the Paul people, who are pretty organized, could have agreed not to nominate any others from the floor. Given the complexity of the voting (Chuck Johnson reports that the tabulation of the votes took nearly 5 hours yesterday,) neither side could be completely sure in advance of the final results (which were indeed apparently fairly close.) One would think that the opportunity to have one big happy family at the convention with such a slate approved by unanimous consent, would have been strongly considered by the state party. One certainly hopes so, anyway.

Absent Hart making such overtures, the state party could only assume that the Paul delegation intended to go for the full slate -- upon which the only logical response would be for the nominating committee to nominate a full slate of John McCain supporters. Which is what they did.

This is all tea-leaf reading, since MH is not privy to the inner workings either of the delegate selection committee at the state party or of the Ron Paul campaign. Anyone reading this who does have such knowledge is welcome to contact us.

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Quote of the day from Bob Kelleher: “It would be a lot better if I lost. I didn’t plan on winning.”

The same article states that Kelleher advocates banning handguns and that he has apparently lost none of his fervor for "replacing the U.S. form of government with the parliamentary system."

And Democrats claim to be serious in wondering why he wasn't given a prime-time speaking slot.

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More from Carol at Missoulapolis live-blogging the state convention about the section of the platform committee that got taken over by the Ron Paul folks. Apparently we Montana Republicans have taken an official position for the gold standard now. Must-read stuff. Someone needs to send this woman to the national convention to live-blog through Montana eyes -- get a professional impersonator to go door-to-door campaigning in her house district for her while she's gone. Something.