“We are absolutely not dropping out of this race! We are focusing our efforts squarely on winning delegates and party leadership positions at state conventions.”

– Jesse Benton, Campaign Chairman

Ron Paul announced today he would not be competing in the upcoming primary states, saying that he would focus, instead, on his delegate strategy. A strategy that is working, by the way, and transforming the Republican Party. It is something he has said many times since the February 11, 2012 caucus in Maine.

Only this time, the main stream media gave the announcement full attention and treated it like the end of his campaign. Drudge ran it as a front page headline “Ron Paul is out.”

It is all evidence that Alfred Harmsworth’s famous quote that “news is not when a dog bites a man but, rather, when a man bites a dog” has now been offciaily turned on its head.

For the last two years the national media has been saying that Ron Paul is out. So how could that possibly be news? One might ask, “When has the mainstream media ever thought that Ron Paul was in?”

Bracing for a Ron Paul win in Iowa, major new outlets last January announced that if he won, the Iowa Caucus, itself, would be discredited. According to the New York Times and the Associated Press, Ron Paul is still listed as the recipient of one, count em, one delegate from Iowa, a state that he now dominates.

Likewise, the fact that Ron Paul supporters took a big chunk of the delegation of Mitt Romney’s home state of Massachusetts was not big news. This was evidently not a man biting a dog. There were no headlines, just small reports saying we were “flooding” state conventions with delegates. We were sucker punching the front runner. Even this, “we were stealing delegates.” Now, that’s a trick.

It was a ridiculous assertion. One cannot “flood” state conventions with delegates. Nor can one “steal” a delegates, unless they mean we packed them away in vans and drove them off to camps behind barbed wired. Each delegate was elected at District or County caucuses by delegates that were elected at precinct caucuses. So yes, one can flood precinct caucuses with people who in turn must get elected but that had to happen last January or February. It was then that we beat Romney in Massachusetts, and all the other states, it was in the heat of battle.

Now? We are trying to make nice. Like our attempt to “give” him the delegation from Arizona, an offer his man refused to make. So after three attempts to give him a majority we reluctantly won instead, thank you.

The fact is that all of this fighting makes Ron Paul nervous. Yes, he is taking on the establishment. Yes, he wants the monetary policy reformed so that the poor and the middle class and even the excluded rich can know the thrill and opportunity of free markets that aren’t rigged for insider trading. But Dr. Paul is a happy warrior on these issues. He is a person who has always believed in a respectful dialogue and debate. As John Tate says, “That is what he wants his legacy to be.”

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Shouting people down is not Ron Paul’s way. Winning a battle of ideals based on principles, in a respectful way, is how he approaches the contest and it is how he wants others to approach the contest, as well.

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By ending the primary battles, Ron Paul is signalling to the field that this is the end of hostilities. In primaries you end up tearing each other down. It is millions of dollars spent on negative advertising. In caucuses, as brutal as they may be, you change the Republican Party, you empower the new and challenge the established.

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The delegate strategy is working. That is the way we will impact the platform in Tampa. That is the way we will begin the process of change. It is through the caucuses that we are attracting youth, like the twenty-one year old woman recently elected to the national committee from Maine or the Ron Paul Hispanics or the Independents who have never been involved in party politics.

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Yes there is pain.

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The establishment turned off the air conditioning at the Arizona State GOP Convention last weekend, trying to sweat the Ronulans into leaving.

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In Oklahoma they pulled out a ballroom divider to cordon off Ron Paul supporters and shut them out of participation. Later they turned out the lights. Voice votes that were clearly lost were declared won.

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In Carson County, Nevada they turned off a microphone when a Hispanic tried to speak, they knew that Hispanics were for Ron Paul.

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In Minnesota they told their people not to vote for any delegate under the age of fifty.

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In Alaska, they defeated the majority by retaining the committee which “interpreted rules” and later, after taking the delegation, reluctantly gave up the party control to the new majority but transferred all of the money out of the Republican Party accounts.

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In Virginia, at a District Convention, they coaxed the Ron Paul delegation outside and then locked the door. The pastor of the church that was hosting the event was, himself, locked outside.

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In Missouri they had all the delegates sign up at County Conventions and then had their County Chairman take the rolls outside and lock them in their car trunks so they could block roll call voting and have their chairman declare lost voice votes as won. At another convention delegates were arrested.

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Our people have been punched, yelled at, lied to and worked until they can hardly stand. But on they come, fighting for their children, fighting for their future, angry at the corruption of the banks, of Wall Street, of the lobbyists, of the congress, of the White House. The battle for liberty is not over. It has just taken on a new phase. It cannot be stopped by the national media. If that were the case it would never have been born in the first place.

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And some will say that it is a lost cause, which I will not concede but it does remind me of Clarence Darrow’s famous line, “Lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for.”

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Join the discussion online right now.

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