A few days back, I criticized Ron Paul for suggesting that the Republican party of Maine had stacked the deck against him. When I’m wrong I say so. In my own defense, it was an easy mistake to make as it’s been hard to find a time when Paul or his acolytes were not sniveling over some perceived injustice. It is now clear that there were enough irregularities in the Maine caucuses to bring Paul’s complaint into the realm of possibility. Imagine, if you will the Chair of the Maine Republican Party. Watching the returns he sees that Ron Paul might actually win the caucuses there. Oh the shame! Oh the humiliation they would suffer to be the only state where Ron Paul has ever, or will ever, win the caucuses or a primary! Faced with such an anathema, I can picture the party leaders cooking the results out of fear that the entire Republican Party of Maine might be certified insane.

Washington County, Maine, is the easternmost point in the continental United States. This region of rocky shores and pinetree forests is populated by proudly independent — and defiant — citizens. The Republicans in Washington County have supported such radical and underdog candidates as Ross Perot and Patrick Buchanan in the past. Too bad they didn’t get to participate in the Maine caucuses last weekend. Due to a snowstorm, the Republican party in Washington County (and in various locations in neighboring Hancock County) was forced to reschedule its caucuses for this coming weekend. Yet despite not having results from these precincts, Maine Republican Chairman Charlie Webster declared Mitt Romney the victor in the Maine caucus. Romney, Webster reported, earned 2,190 votes, while Ron Paul finished second with 1,996 votes. According to the Associated Press, the chairman of the Washington County Republican Party, Chris Gardner, a Romney supporter, called state party leaders and expressed his “complete and utter dismay.” Washington County Republican leaders, who moved their caucuses to this coming Saturday after snow made it difficult to meet last weekend, will convene these postponed caucuses this Saturday, and County Chair Gardner is hoping that state party officials will change their mind and accept the results. He shouldn’t hold his breath. After all, the Republican leadership in Maine refused to accept the results of other caucuses that were completed in time. Eighteen towns that held caucuses in Waldo County reported their results by the Feb. 11 deadline, yet those totals showed up nowhere in the final tally. Nor did the results from Waterville or Belfast make it into the GOP numbers even though the caucuses held in those towns were also completed by the deadline. The one variable that links each of these cases is Ron Paul. If all of Waldo County’s caucus totals counted (including the excluded results), Paul would have won by 21 votes. Paul was the only candidate to visit Waterville, where he spoke to students at Colby College and tallied 16 more votes than Romney in the excluded Waterville caucus. When the chairman of the Belfast Caucus Committee telephoned his results showing a Paul victory to the state’s Republican headquarters, he was told they already had the numbers. Those numbers mysteriously — and inaccurately — showed a Romney victory in Belfast. When the final tally for Maine’s caucus was announced, zero votes from Belfast were included. Interestingly, not a single case of excluded caucus results supporting Romney has been publicly identified yet…

Inserted from <Reuters>

The best coverage of this issue I have seen comes from Rachel Maddow on Wednesday night, including her interview with Maine columnist Bill Nemitz.

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She updated her coverage last night by announcing that the Republican Party of Maine is reviewing the results and might even include Washington County. She interviewed Chris Gardner.

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There are two possibilities. If the original results were fraudulent, the Republican Party has demonstrated that they are too corrupt to be entrusted with running the nation. On the other hand, if the original results were merely an example of the same level of competence evident throughout the Bush Regime, the Republican Party has demonstrated that they are too incompetent to run the country.