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Op-Ed: RNC Shenanigans: Thank You Sir, May I Have Another?

By • March 3, 2023

“The sadist desires to command and control. The masochist desires to be freed from the burdens of liberty.” ― A.E. Samaan

The 1978 comedy Animal House depicts the charades of the rag-tag Delta Tau Chi fraternity of Faber College, clashing with Dean Wormer to maintain their university charter. Opposing Delta Tau Chi is the neighboring prestigious Omega Theta Pi fraternity. In one notable scene, frat pledge Chip Diller, portrayed by Actor Kevin Bacon, is hazed in ritual embarrassment by his senior Omega brothers. As he kneels on his hands and knees, his cloaked initiators paddle his bottom, at which time he winces and pleads politely, “Thank you, sir. May I have another?” This scene embodies conservatives’ repeated abuses for a perceived seat at the table of national politics. Will conservatives again bend the knee to their initiators, or will conservatives drive policy from the bottom up?

In 2012, when Congressman Ron Paul couldn’t get a fair shake in the corporate press or the Republican presidential primary debates, his campaign concocted a strategy utilizing the party’s own rules that would force the national party to take action. To be nominated at the Republican National Convention, get a floor speech, and have the leverage to change the Republican Party’s platform required a plurality of five state or territory delegations to the convention. Though Congressman Paul couldn’t win statewide primaries in a fixed media game, he could win delegates to the national convention by focusing on states where delegates were unbound to candidates. That is what he did. He visited states where delegates were unbound and dispatched an army of active college students from his Young Americans for Liberty organization to campaign in those states. His strategy was successful.

When the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida arrived, Congressman Paul had amassed a plurality of delegates from six or seven states and territories. Though he never held enough delegates to take the party’s nomination for president, he did hold enough to push his ideas into the mainstream. What would follow was a demonstration to the grassroots of conservatism that their votes are wanted, but not their voices.

Then–RNC chair Reince Priebus, House speaker John Boehner, RNC lawyer Ben Ginsberg, and candidates Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan instituted a loyalty pledge requiring all delegates to the national convention to devote their delegate vote to Romney/Ryan, thus binding votes that state legislatures did not. When delegations like those of the Republican Party of Maine refused to sign the loyalty pledge, the RNC had many delegates forcefully removed from the convention and replaced with their hand-picked representatives. Contested voice votes that were taken while entire delegations weren’t present changed the national rules. The delegate threshold for the nomination was increased from five to eight. The insurgency was over.

Nearly twelve years later, the RNC power brokers are once again making their moves to stifle the voices of the working class and grassroots America. Having lost their stronghold over local and state parties during the Trump administration, power brokers are lining up to elevate Florida governor Ron DeSantis. We’re beginning to see much of the same playbook as in 2012. Not content with addressing clear electoral fraud that has bolstered leftist majorities, power brokers have adopted the mantra that Trump can’t win. The reality is that Trump not only gave the best administrative performance in at least forty years, but also had one of the best Republican presidential campaign performances since before the Civil Rights era.

In what ways do we see the same playbook unfolding? Having recently re-elected Mitt Romney’s niece to the chair of the National Republican Committee, the press is giving Donald Trump the Ron Paul treatment, which is to say pretending he doesn’t exist. Not the least of these media outlets is FOX News, now spearheaded by Rupert Murdoch’s liberal son and failed vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan.

Similarly, in the mold of Uncle Mitt and Reince Priebus, Ronna Romney McDaniel is now promoting the National Republican Committee’s pursuit of a loyalty pledge, binding campaigns to support whomever the press elevates to the nomination as a prerequisite to participate in debates. Let’s hope this loyalty pledge goes farther than the loyalty of Florida governor Ron DeSantis. In 2018, DeSantis couldn’t slap on another piece of Trump flair fast enough. Now he treats MAGA like leprosy.

As many pundits have noted, the changes instituted in the 2012 RNC power-grab by team Romney hampered the RNC’s ability to wrestle back control of the party from MAGA and helped make Trump the president in 2016. When delegates opposed casting their nomination votes for Donald Trump, they were left without recourse because of the prior rule changes. Having been on the losing end of the rule changes, the RNC is prepared to take a new strategy and establish a loyalty pledge of candidates before the primary process, as opposed to during the nomination process.

The question arises: is the RNC prepared to demand the loyalty of power brokers to Donald Trump should he once again ascend the field of contenders? Trump is nothing if not a champion fighter.

This Op-Ed was submitted by Brian Parsons and originally published on WithdrawConsent.org. Op-Eds do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of those at the Idaho Dispatch.

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Tags: 2024 Presidential Election, Donald Trump, MAGA, Mitt Romney, Politics, Presidential Election, Republican National Committee, RNC, Ron DeSantis, Ron Paul

13 thoughts on “Op-Ed: RNC Shenanigans: Thank You Sir, May I Have Another?

  1. I am tired of the same old politics! It should not be up to the power brokers or special interests of the RNC to decide who should represent for the people, the people should be able to decide. I like Trump and DeSantis, but I also like the grass roots movement in the House and what is happening in that movement. That movement should continue in these proceedings. Let them all debate and let the people decide, not the power brokers.

  2. Absolutely! Anything less is still cheating the system- which usually means cheating We, the People!

  3. Oh, here we go again. Dredging up the supposed offenses to the Libertarians now posing as Republicans, those who supported Ron Paul for all those election cycles, those who cried “FOUL” in all those elections nationwide, finally had it come back to roost at the Ada County Republican caucus. After all the tremendous efforts had been made to show the Room Paul faction that our caucus was not going to tolerate, nor experience, fraud of any kind, there actually turned out to be an attempt to fraudulently influence that caucus voting process. And which supporters made that attempt? Yep, Ron Paul’s. Oh, the irony of it. Gratefully, which candidate’s support staff acknowledged that attempt but didn’t ask for a re-vote? Same guy, Ron Paul. Instead, they figured they’d get even by calling everyone that wasn’t in lock step with them, “RINOS” for the rest of eternity. Makes me wish we’d been forced to do a re-vote.

    1. If there is a fraud out there it is the Idaho RINO Republiscam party itself. The people who signed a letter of support for the Demonrat candidate for AG, the same people who torpedoed Janice McGeachin, the people who now want to give drivers licenses to criminal aliens, the list goes on. Time to drive a stake through their heart and put together a party that represent Idaho.

      1. Oh, it’s there, just waiting for the fraudulent Republicans to go back to the Libertarian Party. But, nice deflection on my comment.

        1. Ron Paul served in Congress for 25 years over a 40 year period and always as a Republican. His record was also exceptionally conservative, as opposed to Mitt Romney who was a registered Democrat from Massachusetts, who ran as a Republican before handing Obama a secind term and then serving as the DNC swing vote during the Trump Admin. What exactly do you think it means to be a Republican?

  4. Quatermain is so correct. This refugee from Oregon (sorry to be driving home prices up) is absolutely distressed to see how captured and polluted the Republican party leadership in Idaho is, from top to bottom. This rare last refuge has been undermined, and is being taken over, by the controlled opposition known as RINO. If the citizens don’t wake up soon it’s over. Run for School Boards, City Councils, local representation, speak up, speak out. The alternative is eating bugs, forced inoculation (coming in May with Traitor Biden signing the WHO Treaty), and the mass extermination continues. Wake up, please. Read Truth11, the Expose, American Thinker, AND magazine, Slay News. Principia-Scientific, Burning Platform, Wharfinger, True Idaho News, Redoubt News, and hundreds of others that are telling the truth. Educate yourself, resist, do not comply.

  5. Reelecting Ronna was a huge mistake for the Republican party as she will do all she can to fragment it more than it already is. We as a country don’t have a lot of time left to fix the problems that the neocons and rinos helped the left create. It is always about them and not about the people who are now paying a steep price for allowing Biden to win in 2020. I have been a republican all of my voting life and will say unequivocally that the party has left me the rest of it’s loyal party members. They have been instrumental along with the left in turning America into a third world country and if we don’t get a business man like Trump elected in 2024 and get someone like DeSantis for 8 more after him I don’t want to think where we will wind up.

  6. Thr Republican party is at best the lesser of the two evils. Our politicians , government employeed and the military are the enemy that has destroyed this nation. It wan’t Russia, China, Iran or North Korea that bankrupted this nation, redistributed our wealth to foreign nations, lazy people or stolen our liberties and freedoms.

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