Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has yet to extend an invitation to Ron Paul or Sarah Palin to speak at the GOP convention to be held in August in Tampa, Florida.
At the Nebraska state convention held July 14 in Grand Island, Nebraska, Congressman (and still candidate) Ron Paul hoped to guarantee himself a speaking slot by winning a majority of the state’s 32 delegates. Republican Party rules say that candidates can’t be entered officially as nominees unless they’ve won a majority of delegates in five states. Paul fell just short of that goal, putting his position as a featured speaker at the mercy of Mitt.
Despite the reluctance of the senior Paul to throw his support behind Romney, as The New American reported at the time, Paul’s son Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has endorsed Romney. Senator Paul told Sean Hannity in June that while his “first choice had always been [his] father,” he said that now that the nominating process is over, he would be campaigning for the former governor of Massachusetts.
For her part, Tea Party darling and reality show has-been Sarah Palin has yet to officially endorse Mitt Romney’s campaign for the White House. Notably, Palin has endorsed the possibility of former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice taking the second spot on the Republican presidential ticket. “I think that Condoleezza Rice would be a wonderful vice president, and she certainly has much more experience than our sitting president does today,” Palin said last Thursday.
In fairness, Romney isn’t exactly reaching out to Paul or Palin for their stamp of approval.
Ron Paul is not showing signs of being stung by the snub. The libertarian-leaning Texan and chief foe of the Fed has planned his own rally scheduled to take place at the University of South Florida’s 110,000 seat Sun Dome the day before the Republican convention begins across town. Thousands of “Paulistas” are expected to pack the venue in support of Ron Paul’s message of “peace, prosperity, and individual liberty.”
Palin won’t be speaking at the Paul event, either. She has been busy, though, promoting books, speaking at Tea Party-friendly rallies, and calling for the defeat of President Barack Obama in November. When asked about her reaction to Romney’s delay in inviting her to speak at August’s convention, Palin seemed unaffected:
What can I say?… I’m sure I’m not the only one accepting consequences for calling out both sides of the aisle for spending too much money, putting us on the road to bankruptcy, and engaging in crony capitalism.
It’s not like she’s suffering from a deficit of attention, however. The former Alaskan governor’s name has been in the news the past few days as her former running mate, Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) has come to her defense, insisting that she was a better choice for vice president in 2008 than Mitt Romney. When asked by a reporter why he picked Palin over Romney, McCain got a bit testy, saying,
Oh come on, because we thought that Sarah Palin was the better candidate. Why did we not take [Tim] Pawlenty, why did we not take any of the other 10 other people. Why didn’t I? Because we had a better candidate, the same way with all the others…. Come on, why? That’s a stupid question.
Maybe, maybe not, but it’s not a stupid question to ask why Palin is even being promoted as a voice for the Republican Party. She was never a candidate in 2012, choosing instead to lurk on the edges of the race, perhaps a savvy strategy to maintain her name recognition in advance of a future run at the Oval Office.
Despite her indisputable Tea Party bona fides, Palin has expressed many positions placing her squarely within the center stake of the GOP’s big tent. She has supported military intervention in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran, as well as promoting roles for the federal government beyond those granted to it by the states in the Constitution. Given this, it’s difficult to understand why a brilliant self-promoter such as Palin would withhold her endorsement from the man all but guaranteed to be the Republican nominee for President.
A recent Newsweek story set out to explain the source of Palin hesitancy:
Romney was the choice of the party’s elites, whom Palin has regarded with open disdain ever since her rough treatment during the 2008 campaign. They are some of the same people who anonymously disparaged Palin as a clueless bumpkin, and some of them are now helping to run Romney’s campaign. When unnamed Romney aides tell reporters that Romney will likely go with a “safe” choice for vice president because of the 2008 “disaster,” Palin notices.
Ron Paul is another one who would never be described as a “safe choice” for any establishment Republican.
Evidence of Paul’s tenacity and his sense of his importance to the cause of the Constitution was found in a recent e-mail sent to supporters. “When it is all said and done, we will likely have as many as 500 supporters as delegates on the convention floor,” the icon said in his e-mail. “That is just over 20 percent! And while this total is not enough to win the nomination, it puts us in a tremendous position to grow our movement and shape the future of the GOP,” he continued.
Then, in reference to the hundreds of delegates chosen at the various state party conventions to represent their states at the national convention, Ron Paul said, “[We] will send several hundred additional supporters to Tampa who, while bound to Romney, believe in our ideas of liberty, constitutional government, and a common-sense foreign policy.”
Finally, Paul encouraged his legion of devoted followers to “let the establishment know that we are the future of the Party and of the country.” In light of these statements, it seems easy to understand why Paul would not believe that the surest way to wrest control of the party from the tight grip of the establishment is to endorse the establishment’s candidate.
There is still time for speaking invitations to arrive in the Paul and Palin mailboxes, however. While neither of them is exactly Romney-esque in approach, someone in Romney’s camp might convince their boss to make the offers in the hope of persuading some of the thousands of those Republicans who support these two popular people to vote for party over principle.
