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The devotees of Crazy Uncle Liberty (!) had a bad weekend for themselves. It seems the good, rock-ribbed conservative Republicans of Nebraska put something of a final end to the golden dream by which Crazy Uncle Liberty (!) and his misguided legions would raise all kinds of lovely hell at the Republican National Convention in Tampa. Perhaps this is because the Republican state convention out in Grand Island lasted longer than five minutes, which, as every reader of the blog knows, is exactly how long you have to listen to Crazy Uncle Liberty (!) or most of his followers because, at exactly 5:00.00001, they will say something so clearly pulled out of the political izonkosphere that you start looking for the emergency-stop handle on the subway train. Like so....

It was obvious early in the convention that Paul did not have the numbers to win, although he had a strong showing. If early procedural votes were any indication, Paul had about 130 to 150 supporters among the 350 delegates who assembled in Grand Island, but Romney supporters were highly organized and disciplined. About five members of Romney's staff were on hand to ensure that pro-Romney delegates knew exactly who to send to Tampa and that the rules were followed. Romney even sent famed GOP attorney Ben Ginsberg to watch over the convention. Ginsberg represented George W. Bush in the 2000 Florida recount case. In the end, there were no fireworks. The closest it came to being unruly was when a Paul supporter vigorously objected to a procedural ruling from Fahleson. That ended when Fahleson said he would have the man escorted out of the building.

There has been an unreasonable amount of attention paid to the efforts of the Paul forces to monkey-wrench the nominating process in the various states. (Kindly Doc Maddow seemed curiously fascinated by this whole charade.) There were always only two ways this was going to end. The Romney people were going to squash "the revolution" peacefully, or they were going to do it ruthlessly. There was never a third alternative. And now, since it has been done relatively peacefully, the fans can sit back and watch Dr. Paul negotiate for a speaking spot, and try to carve out a space going forward for his son, Senator Aqua Buddha of Kentucky, and behave in all circumstances like the career politicians that he's always been, and we can all get a break from his lefty fans who think the sum total of him is his promise to end foreign wars that he never would be in place to do anything about anyway.

"I was really hoping for a brokered convention — have a new guy offered at the convention," said Sean Tyler, a Paul supporter from rural Fremont.

Dare to dream, lad.

At the end of last week, there was a bit of a stirring in the blogosphere about this state senator in Iowa named Randi Shannon, who, in essence, declared herself seceded from the United States of America.

In a letter dated July 4, the candidate, Randi Shannon of Coralville, argued that the legitimate federal government of the United States was replaced by illegitimate "corporate" government in 1871 and has been operating since then in violation of the U.S. Constitution. She learned this fact just recently, she said, and has come to believe it after months of research. Dropping her bid for state office was a rejection of that illegitimate government. Now, she said she has been appointed to serve as a U.S. senator in the recently revived and constitutionally legitimate Republic of the United States of America. She was placed in the office, she said, by Iowa's four U.S. House members in the "Republic" government.

Guess who Shannon thanked in the letter announcing that she had accepted her appointment to office in the United States Of My Head?

A-yup.

Iowa City's Randi Shannon, who was the official Republican candidate on the ballot for Iowa Senate District 34, thanked her fellow Ron Paul supporters in announcing she's left the race to become a senator with the "original government."

(Also, if your movement argues that the actual United States government disappeared in 1871, and that the real government ceased operating because of the outcome of the Civil War and the failure of the idea of "state's rights," you have unexamined issues worth looking at.)

At its most elemental, the Ron Paul "revolution" was primarily a catchbasin for traditional nativism, goldbuggery, unreconstructed Confederatism, wishful thinking, constitutional mumbledy-peg and, on its not-too-distant fringes, some even more distasteful nuggets from American crackpottery past. (The racism in those newsletters was not accidental. It was the inevitable byproduct in history of most of the ideas that Paul promoted elsewhere. And Senator Aqua Buddha is really the pure stuff, as we will see as he ascends to the leadership of the "revolution.") That so many progressives fell for the con is a measure of the essential intellectual bankruptcy of the Democratic party.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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