Paul campaign manager John Tate and campaign chairman Jesse Benton negotiated with Romney confidantes Ben Ginsberg and Ron Kaufman about how to handle the contested delegations.

Romney campaign manager Matt Rhoades and political director Rich Beeson stayed in touch with their Paul counterparts.

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The Republican National Committee hired Paul campaign press secretary Gary Howard in June as “special projects director.” He’s worked the halls this week helping his new bosses.

Policy staffers felt out the Paul campaign to get a sense of their priorities and where they might overlap with the former Massachusetts governor’s public positions.

More than a week before the group convened here, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell — a loyal Romney surrogate tapped to lead the platform committee — called Rand Paul to get his input on a plank requiring an audit of the Federal Reserve. North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven, who co-chaired the platform meeting, also reached out to the younger Paul.

During a dinner on Sunday night, platform co-chair Marsha Blackburn — a Tennessee congresswoman — talked cordially with two Paul supporters. Mike Wallace, a Paul representative from Maine, said he had a discussion with Blackburn about not being offended by what Paul supporters want to accomplish.

“These people are being genuine and they want to be accepted,” he recalled saying. “It’s hard to nurture trust when there are a lot of Type A people who feel their identity is being threatened.”

Considering that only 11 of the 112 platform committee members supported Paul, the Romney forces allowed a disproportionate influence of the Paulites on the draft platform, which was approved this week.

The document basically calls for auditing the Federal Reserve, with some caveats. It even supports a presidential commission to study metallic basing of the currency, modeled on a similar panel on the gold standard that Reagan created as president. The Paul campaign said it got Internet freedom language adopted that is nearly verbatim to an Internet freedom manifesto published by the pro-Paul Campaign for Liberty.

For the first time, the platform has a whole section about the U.S. Constitution. Paulites also won on language opposing the use of domestic drones and protecting private property from being seized unfairly by government.