Rick Santorum Takes Missouri (Again) Mitt Romney Dominates Puerto Rico Ron Paul Supporters Sabotage Missouri Caucuses

It is presumed that Rick Santorum has re-won Missouri (despite sabotage attempts by Ron Paul supporters) the state is scheduled to have another caucus on April 21st, where delegates will be chosen at the congressional district conventions. There are two more votes scheduled for Missouri. Here is an explanation of how the confusing caucus system in Missouri works:

How do the caucuses work?

• County Caucuses, March 17, 2012: Attendees will select delegates and alternates to the Congressional District Conventions and State Convention.  Delegates selected at the county level will not be bound to a specific candidate unless a rule is passed by participants of the caucus. (See below for a list of county caucus locations.)

• Congressional District Conventions, April 21, 2012: Delegates chosen at the county level will select 3 delegates and alternates to the National Convention and 1 presidential elector.  These delegates and alternates will identify their candidate before being chosen.  They will be bound to that candidate on the first ballot at the national convention. (For Congressional District Convention location information, please see the bottom of this page.)

• State Convention, June 2, 2012: Delegates chosen at the county level will vote on a slate of 25 at-large delegates and alternates to the National Convention and 2 at-large presidential electors. These delegates and alternates will identify their candidate before being chosen.  They will be bound to that candidate on the first ballot at the national convention.

Source: Missouri GOP

The results of the previous Missouri caucus.

More on the attempts to sabotage the Missouri caucuses by Ron Paul supporters is after the section on Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico


Mitt Romney won over 50% of the Puerto Rican vote, meaning he gets all 20 of the delegates. It is expected that he will get 2 of the 3 superdelegates as well.

The Puerto Rico Results with 83% of precincts reporting:

Candidate	Votes	Percentage
Mitt Romney	98,375	88.0%
Rick Santorum	9,524	8.5%
Newt Gingrich	2,431	2.2%
Ron Paul	1,452	1.3%

There are no victory speeches available, so here are a couple of other videos relating to the Puerto Rican primary and a look at the way at least one candidate got the results of the vote...

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Puerto Rican Governor Luis Fortuño greets Mitt Romney


Ron Paul Supporters Sabotage Missouri Caucuses


St Charles County




An account from a caucus participant in Christian County, Missouri:

Hubby and myself were in the Christian County Republican caucus today. It was insane.

Nobody got arrested like in St Charles, because our sheriff was the sargent in arms--but it got nutso from the get go....

The Ron Paulites tried to take over the process by bastardizing Robert Rules of order, objecting to every teeny tiny thing.

Their leader stood up and threaten to take their votes to Obama if the the majority did not respect the Ron paul minority and elect the chosen Ron paul delegates.

Source: Atlas Shrugs (read the whole thing) 

Here is an account by a Ron Paul Supporter of what he observed in St Charles County:

GOP voters began showing up at the high school two hours before the caucus was set to begin at 10 a.m. Though the meeting didn’t start on time as organizers worked to accommodate the near-overflow crowd, attendees would get more than they bargained for before the day ended.

The caucus began shortly after 11 a.m. with an invocation and pledge of allegiance. It was followed by a reading of the rules by County GOP Central Committee Member Bryan Spencer and an introduction of County GOP Chair Eugene Dokes.

Dokes reiterated the importance of the rules and emphasized the ban on recording devices before pausing to implore a man in the bleachers to turn off his video camera or face arrest.

Source: Bob McCarty Writes (he also links to other coverage of the chaos)



Video from Christian County


A Ron Paul Supporter describes the plan to subvert the caucus process by putting forth delegates as Trojan Horses


I, as a conservative, am disgusted by the unruly and anarchistic behavior of the libertarian supporters of Ron Paul. Perhaps the events of this weekend will encourage the Republican party to move away from a voting method that is easily sabotaged by a handful of organized bad actors. Primaries are not so easily sabotaged and they allow for the participation of more people in the process of selecting the nominee of their party.

Delegate Math

The nomination of the Republican party candidate for President is essentially a numbers game. The 2,286 delegates who attend the RNC 2012 Convention in Tampa, Florida will select the nominee of the Republican party based on the varied (and often confusing) rules of the state or territory they represent. The candidate who will be the nominee of the party has to receive the votes of 1,144 of the 2,286 delegates.

In past election cycles, most states were winner take all and the nomination was usually acknowledged before March by a majority of the serious candidates and they would drop out in order to clear the way for the candidate who had demonstrated they had a plurality of support in the party.

This year, things are different in two ways. First, the RNC voted to change the calendar and made most states give out their delegates in a proportional manner in order to prolong the nomination contest. This, in my opinion, was an important ingredient in a recipe for disaster. The second change, is the unwillingness of candidates to acknowledge they cannot win the delegates necessary to be the nominee of the party. Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are running as spoilers, hoping to deny the front runner the number of delegates necessary to be nominated. The reason I don't include Ron Paul in this category is because he has never been a threat to upset the process; he simply does not have the level of support necessary to pull it off and...the majority of his supporters are not likely to vote for the Republican nominee if that nominee is not Ron Paul.

Here is the state of the nomination contest to date: (March 19, 2012)

Candidate	Delegates Won	% Delegates Won	Delegates Needed	% Remaining Needed
Mitt Romney	513	44.84%	631 of 1328	47.52%
Rick Santorum	239	20.89%	905 of 1328	68.15%
Newt Gingrichl	139	12.15%	1005 of 1328	75.68%
Ron Paul	69	6.03%	1075 of 1328	80.95%

The numbers are stark. It is virtually impossible for anyone other than Mitt Romney to win the nomination and, at this point, to stay in the race is a destructive act that adds nothing to what has previously been said. All it does is increase friction and discord within the various ideological factions within the party. All this when we will be facing a very well funded candidate (Obama) who will be enjoying an unprecedented army of organized supporters who will be building on their 2008 campaign experience.

I've used the numbers from CNN for this table. Most of the "guesstimates" of how many delegates each candidate has is within 20 delegates of the numbers used above and, if those other numbers are used, change little in the look of the table.