And wait, there’s more!

If Paul delegates succeed in capturing a majority of delegates from just five states — which they are well on their way to accomplishing — they can nominate Paul from the convention floor.

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Of course, they’d still need 1,144 votes to crown him the nominee.

What about Rule 38?

And here enters the endless arguments over how to interpret the Republican Party’s arcane nominating rules.

Rule 38 is a favorite of Paul supporters because it seems to imply that the state is not allowed to bind delegates at all.

Referred to as the Unit Rule, the measure says “no delegate or alternate delegate shall be bound” by any state’s attempt to impose the “unit rule.”

According to Josh Putnam, a scholar on the presidential nominating process at Davidson College in North Carolina, the rule is a throwback from the days when party bosses would strong-arm a state delegation into backing a single candidate.

Most party officials and observers say it doesn’t apply to states that have binding caucuses.

The problem for the Republican National Committee, as Putnam notes, is that the rule is still on the books and opens up an interpretation argument for Paul’s backers.

RNC rules clearly say a delegate can abstain from the vote. Wouldn’t that set Paul loyalists free from voting for Romney?

Well, probably not.

In practice, when a majority of delegates decide they are going to abstain from the nominating vote, that state’s delegation is skipped over in the roll call.

Putnam said the rules aren’t clear what happens after all of the states vote and the skipped states get a second shot at it. If they abstain again, it could create an endless “feedback loop where the convention gets stuck.”

But Nevada Republican Secretary Jim DeGraffenreid notes that the roll-call vote doesn’t allow individual delegates to shout out their vote.

Instead, the delegation chair submits the state’s total. In Nevada’s case, the chair would shout out 20 votes for Romney and eight for Paul.

Any delegate looking to circumvent that bind would likely be replaced by an alternate delegate, DeGraffenreid said. And all of the alternates elected at the state convention are Romney supporters.

So, if Paul’s supporters can’t nominate him, what’s the point of all this work?

First, it’s not totally impossible — highly unlikely, but not out of the realm of possibility — for Paul to put together a patchwork collection of 1,144 national delegates. They could potentially win over delegates from the failed presidential bids of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum or continue on their caucus-state strategy of controlling state conventions.

But in the end, not all of them are convinced that the only victory is the nomination. They want to infuse the Republican Party with Paul’s brand of libertarian, isolationist and small-government politics. With enough supporters at the national convention, they’ll receive national news coverage, could influence the platform and even make life difficult enough for Romney that he’s forced to reach some kind of deal with Paul.

“Romney would have to give something,” said Carl Bunce, Paul’s Nevada chairman. “Who knows what that could be? It depends on how many delegates we get and how much leverage we have.”

Putnam said the RNC and Romney will be highly motivated to avoid any disruption to their choreographed convention.

“This potentially could be very messy for them,” Putnam said. “It would behoove them to come up with whatever they can to avoid that.”

Anjeanette Damon writes for the Las Vegas Sun, which is partnering with POLITICO to cover the 2012 presidential elections.