Ron Paul gets 'smoked' in Nebraska

It looks like Ron Paul isn’t going to be officially nominated for the presidency in Tampa.

His backers failed to win a plurality of delegate slots at the Nebraska GOP convention Saturday, leaving the Texas congressman short of the support necessary to have his name placed into contention at the national convention.

According to national party rules, a candidate needs a plurality of the delegates in at least five states to have his name presented for the nomination — by falling short in Nebraska, the last state to hold its convention, Paul came up one state short.

From the Omaha World-Herald report:

In the end, the Paul revolution in Nebraska got smoked. Paul, a libertarian Texas congressman, won two of the state GOP’s 35 national convention delegates. Romney, the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, won the rest. “We did it the Nebraska way. In Nebraska, we can have our disagreements but, at the end of the day, we work together,” said Mark Fahleson, state GOP chairman. Paul’s loss in Nebraska means he will not be guaranteed a speaking role at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla. It also means Gov. Dave Heineman does not have to worry about being embarrassed in Tampa. Heineman was the first governor in the nation to endorse Romney. He spent considerable time mobilizing so-called establishment Republicans to back Romney. “He was personally invested,” Fahleson said of the governor.

The run-up to Saturday’s event was fraught with tension as Republicans braced for a more concentrated version of the conflict and chaos that has marked other state convention confrontations between establishment forces and Paul supporters. Those fears turned out to be unfounded.

How concerned was the Romney camp about the Nebraska outcome? The World-Herald’s Robynn Tysver noted the presence of as many as five Romney staffers, including campaign counsel Ben Ginsberg, who was on the scene in Grand Island to keep an eye on things.

