The Humble Libertarian original

By: Wes Messamore After much anxiety and strain, it would appear that the Republican establishment has finally managed to squeeze out Santorum. The Hill reports : Rick Santorum dropped out of the presidential race Tuesday afternoon, essentially guaranteeing Mitt Romney the GOP nomination. Santorum announced that he is suspending his campaign at an event in his home state of Pennsylvania — his first public appearance following the release of his daughter Bella from the hospital and after he took a break from the campaign trail for a long Easter weekend. "While this presidential race is over for me, and we will suspend our campaign today, we are not done fighting," he said from Gettysburg, Pa., flanked by his family. The former senator thanked his supporters for what he called the campaign's "improbable" success. But Santorum's poll numbers were dropping ahead of Pennsylvania's April 24 primary, with Romney throwing the full weight of his campai...

By: Carl Wicklander Just as there are founding national myths, there are also myths meant to allay the conscience after catastrophes. Already we are hearing why the Republicans are going to lose the White House this year. Some are apt to blame the contentious, lengthy primary fight as the reason why Republicans are doomed. Apparently this is the first disputed presidential nomination process in American history. But John Avlon’s take at The Daily Beast (h/t Judy Morris ) is so off-the-mark as to be clownish. Avlon writes: “A cleansing bout of craziness in 2012 could be just what the GOP needs. “I’m talking about a nominee so far to the right that conservative populists get their fondest wish—and the Republican Party is forced to learn from the result. Namely, that there is such a thing as too extreme. . . . “If Mitt Romney does finally wrestle the nomination to the ground, and then loses to Obama, conservatives will blame the loss on his alleged moderation. The right...

By: Wes Messamore Ron Holland writes at LewRockwell : It is time for a groundswell of Ron Paul supporters to quietly, respectfully but firmly make their position clear to the mainstream media and the GOP establishment. Simply put, "No Paul on the ticket means no vote for the GOP in November". The Ron Paul Campaign has the GOP establishment stuck between a rock and a hard place even though they have not won a single state in the primaries to date. Every Paul supporter knows the underhanded tactics used by the Republican leadership at the state and national level as well as the organized smear and news blackout campaign carried out by the mainstream media. Sign the "No Paul, No Vote" petition here . Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

Watch the video below and comment in the threads to say whether you think Santorum almost said the N word and then quickly caught himself. Honestly, I think it's just a really, really funny coincidence as he stumbled over his words: Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

By: Carl Wicklander “This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.” Thus spoke President Obama to outgoing Russian president Dimitri Medvedev near a hot mic. Predictably, all the usual suspects have struck a feigned, outraged pose when they overheard that a politician planned to do something political. The last Republican presidential candidate compared Putin’s Russia to the Soviet Union of Lenin and Stalin. The probable Republican presidential nominee regarded Russia as America’s #1 geopolitical foe . And Newt Gingrich classified Obama himself as “destructive of American interests.” But the hot mic incident was the unlikely spring board for a highly coveted endorsement . Yet it also tells us a lot about the endorser. Freshman Florida senator Marco Rubio has played his cards close to the vest throughout the primary process. When it came time for Florida’s primary on January 31, there had been three contests and three different winners. Rubio’s ...

Yesterday, the closely watched “Obamacare” proceedings at the Supreme Court focused on the issue that most commentators are calling central to the debate over the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act: mandates. The campaign of Republican presidential candidate and 2012 frontrunner, Mitt Romney, probably hates that mandates are the key topic of discussion in this week’s news cycle, and will be for the rest of the Republican Primary until the Supreme Court hands down a decision on what pundits are calling “The Case of the Century.” Or maybe not... Read the rest of my article at The Independent Voter Network . Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

What is it about Jay Leno's show? Every time Ron Paul goes on, it's like he becomes a completely different person. He's so loose, relaxed, makes a lot of pretty funny quips, even has a sort of confident, boyish charm that he doesn't always exhibit on the campaign trail or in debates. When Jay Leno asked him what his preferred Secret Service code name would be, Ron Paul didn't miss a beat before answering, "Bulldog." Watch the entire interview: Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

Up until now, the media has hardly taken notice of the delegate counts as compared to its coverage of who wins each caucus’ presidential preference contest, and as a universally-applied and accepted convention, when a major news source reports “(Candidate) wins (state or territory),” they have always meant the candidate won the presidential preference poll at that state’s nominating contest, not the most delegates. Because of this, the AP‘s Virgin Islands headline seems awfully deceptive and abusive of its audience’s trust. Everyone expects and understands headlines like this to mean what they have always meant this entire primary season; otherwise the media is not comparing “like” with “like.” Instead it’s cherry-picking results to suit an agenda. As the Paul blogger claims at the link above, the media abruptly changed its rules in its coverage of the Virgin Islands caucuses, and just so happened to abruptly change them when Ron Paul won the contest that the media has been using to ...

For the first time ever in either of his two Republican presidential runs, the first in 2008 and the current one in 2012, Ron Paul has taken first in a Republican primary nominating contest in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Sure that's a small victory, but we'll take it! (And why on earth should some of these dinky little states matter any more than the Virgin Islands do?) Here were the totals: 1st Place - Ron Paul: 29% 2nd Place - Mitt Wallstreet: 26% 3rd Place - Rino Santorum: 6% Last Place - Newt Skywalker: 5% WHNT News19 reports : "Ron Paul got the most votes in the Republican Caucus in the Virgin Islands, but Mitt Romney walked away with more delegates. Why? The caucus system is a complicated one in the Virgin Islands." Then they gotta throw this in: "While Dr. Paul getting more votes is a moral victory, during this phase of the campaign, it's all about the delegates." I'm just sure "it's all about the delegates" for ...

The unbound delegate count is one mostly ignored by the mainstream media, especially relative to its coverage of the "beauty contest" results of non-binding straw polls in caucus and primary states. In addition to not being covered very well despite its importance to the process (and would could turn out to be its central importance to the process this election cycle), this matter of the unbound delegate count is frankly kind of confusing. No worries. In this Reality Check with Ben Swann , Ben spotlights these unbound delegates and breaks the issue down with a simple explanation so that viewers can finally understand it. Real, solid journalism at its finest: Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

In an email to supporters Thursday, Ron Paul wrote: Dear [Patriot], The mainstream media got the Super Tuesday story wrong. Very wrong. Again. I'm sure you heard them gleefully talk about which establishment candidate "won" which primary or caucus Tuesday night, if you were even watching. Most Americans thankfully had more sense and switched on something else. The fact is, just like in many of the earlier contests, very few delegates to the Republican National Convention were decided on Tuesday. Most will be decided several weeks, or even months, from now at District and State conventions - conventions where our local delegates will have a big say in who goes to Tampa. In fact, while I didn't win any state's straw polls, my team expects me to win a plurality of delegates in at least three states, as well as outright majorities in two more of the states that have already started their process. Of course, the media totally ignores this story - as the...

Here's CNN's current delegate scorecard . As I've mentioned before, it doesn't match up with delegate counts from other equally mainstream, "reliable" sources, so you can take from that what you will. FULL Results for Super Tuesday Republican Presidential Primaries State Gingrich Paul Romney Santorum reporting 03/06 AK 14.1% 24.0% 32.4% 29.2% 100% 03/06 GA 47.2% 6.6% 25.9% 19.6% 100% 03/06 ID 2.1% 18.1% 61.6% 18.2% 100% 03/06 MA 4.6% 9.5% 72.2% 12.0% 100% 03/06 ND 8.5% 28.1% 23.7% 39.7% 100% 03/06 OH 14.6% 9.2% 37.9% 37.1% 100% 03/06 OK 27.5% 9.6% 28.0% 33.8% 100% 03/06 TN 23.9% 9.0% 28.1% 37.2% 100% 03/06 VA - 40.5% 59.5% - 100% 03/06 VT 8.2% 25.5% 39.8% 23.7% 99% 03/06 WY 0% 2.5% 55.7% 30.5% 26% Source: Associated Press Hat tip: Google Headlines and Commentary on Super Tuesday: Here at The Humble Libertarian , Carl Wicklander offers his excellent commentary and analysis of the Super Tuesday contests yester...

Super Tuesday is over and the results are in: Nothing unexpected. Newt Gingrich won Georgia and nothing else. Santorum won the other southern state, Tennessee, and the rural states, Oklahoma and North Dakota. Romney won the Mormon (Idaho), home (Massachusetts and Vermont), DC area (Virginia), and bellwether (Ohio). And Ron Paul won a few delegates. Santorum and his media allies are going to take their first place finishes and their near-miss in Ohio to emphasize that Romney is a weak front-runner. That the man who outspent us 12 to 1 should have crushed us and should have wrapped up the nomination by now if he was so unstoppable. Romney’s inevitability is not due to his sheer invincibility but to a weak and divided opposition. It is also largely due to the new primary format that is much more proportional than before. According to Real Clear Politics , Romney has at least 354 delegates . For him to have wrapped up the nomination by now he would have to have won literally every si...

So I voted today. They gave me a sticker and everything. I ended up just going with Rick Santorum in the end (see what I did there?) because I still just have so many awesome jokes left, I don't want this Republican primary to end with Santorum falling out and us never hearing his name again for the rest of our lives. I think it's going to take at least four years before I get Santorum completely out of my system. And late night comedy, SNL, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, good gracious-- the freaking Colbert Report?? Those are going to be so unbelievably funny for four years. When the Titanic sunk, the band kept on playing. Noble of them, really. While this ship sinks, the comedians are going to keep on cracking jokes. It'll be beautiful. And before I get that one inevitable commenter writing: "YOU SEEL OUT!! I KNEW IT! YOU CALL YOURSELF A LIBERTARIAN AND YOU VOTED FOR SANTORUM??? OMG OMG OMG," let me just stress that the paragraph above was all tongue-in-chee...

Here's the Huffington Post's interactive map breaking down the Washington state caucuses by county. The Daily Paul has reports trickling in from Ron Paul supporters all over Washington state of voter fraud and disenfranchisement . InfoWars says : "Another strong finish for Paul could mean that both Santroum and Gingrich will re-evaluate their place in the GOP race." If Paul can actually pull off strong finishes on Super Tuesday, and somehow emerge as the only candidate other than Romney to pick up an entire state, the InfoWars claim above certainly rings true to me, but as I've stated in my Super Tuesday headline and commentary roundup , while I'll be watching closely tomorrow, I'm not holding my breath for a big Paul win. We'll see if Alaska comes through for us. Video: Ron Paul's Full Washington State Post Caucus Speech 3/3/12 Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

What is Super Tuesday? Which states are voting? Which are primaries and which are caucuses? How many delegates are up for grabs in each state? How will delegates be allocated, proportionally or winner-take-all? At the risk of giving my college English professor a heart attack, let me link you to the Wikipedia page explaining the answers to all those questions above: this is a really good run down of what happens on Super Tuesday. Where are we right now with the delegate count? Here's CNN's delegate scorecard , but I see different delegate count figures all over the place. Even "trusted" sources of news like CNN differ in their count against other "trusted" sources of news. It's so aggravating I could tear my hair out. Here's The New York Times' delegate count . They can't even agree with CNN over how many delegates each candidate won in a given state, much less the overall delegate count. Can someone link me to a good source explain...