All that stood between Ron Paul quietly positioning himself as a late challenger to Mitt Romney's unfettered Republican presidential coronation were 18 Nebraska delegates up for grabs over the weekend.

But the guile and grasp of intricate party procedures that netted Paul a surprising national delegates gross failed to produce the plurality of Nebraska delegates needed to guarantee him the prized speaking role of an official Republican National Convention nominee.

Instead, Paul drew just two of Nebraska’s 35 delegates Saturday, effectively ending any legitimate chance of challenging for the nomination, or imposing his will on Romney and the party platform.

Still, the renegade Texas congressman from Pittsburgh who studied at Gettysburg College might retain a sliver of hope to address the Tampa convention next month and influence the all-important final months of the Romney campaign.

Paul boasted Friday that hope persists because he makes Romney’s campaign “very insecure.”

And with good reason.

Though all other contenders have summarily dropped out of the race, Paul has defiantly remained in, amassing a delegate haul big enough to complicate Romney's August ascension.

Even though the former Massachusetts governor slogged through a contentious primary season to collect his 1,555 delegates, Paul has cleverly targeted the lower-profile bureaucratic state party conferences where many delegates are actually allocated.

The tactic delivered him 160 delegates, despite failing to win a single state.

By comparison, Pennsylvania’s former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich won 255 and 138 delegates respectively before bowing out and formally endorsing Romney.

Since then, Paul has worked feverishly to amplify his influence while soothing establishment Republican anxieties that he was gearing up for a convention coup.

His clearest step came last month when he acknowledged he won’t be the party nominee. But he still gave pause to moderate party bosses by claiming he’ll bring 500 representatives to the RNC — 200 of them dedicated delegates.

“While this total is not enough to win the nomination, it puts us in a tremendous position to grow our movement and shape the future of the GOP,” he wrote in a June email to supporters.

Once in Tampa, Paul plans to agitate Romney and the RNC to commit to three core positions: a full audit of the Federal Reserve, an expansion of Internet freedoms, and an end to the indefinite detention of suspected terrorists and criminals, according to a campaign spokesman.

The maneuver, its’ libertarian objectives, and Romney’s muted reaction attracted the unapproving gaze of social conservatives already skeptical of Romney’s religious moorings and societal intentions.

“I’m concerned that Ron Paul and some of his supporters out there are looking for a platform fight, and I want to make sure we have strong, principled conservatives there who stood with me in our primary fight to go there and counterbalance the effect of the Paul folks,” said Santorum, a leading conservative voice and Romney’s most resilient nomination rival.

Well aware of establishment GOP suspicions that he’s a party provocateur hell bent on inciting a convention uprising, Paul moved to allay those fears by urging “respectful” behavior by supporters at the RNC and assuring party leaders that his delegate gambit will play out within the rules of convention.

“It certainly isn’t for the reason of disrupting the convention,” he told CNN. “I’m in it for very precise reasons: to maximize our efforts to get as many delegates as we can. I’m still a candidate, and to promote something that is very, very important, that is a change in the direction for the Republican Party.”

But Paul also covets positioning his son, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., for a future presidential run, prompting many to speculate that will guarantee he’ll forgo a third-party bid.

Any disillusionment that likelihood caused among Paul supporters was exacerbated last month when Rand Paul endorsed Romney. The nod, intended to make himself less scary to establishment party powerbrokers, proved so acerbic within the Paul base that it prompted the creation of a “Top 5 Rand Paul for Mitt Romney Meltdowns by Ron Paul Youtubers” website.

“Yeah, it’s a jolt,” said Drew Ivers, Paul’s Iowa campaign chairman. “People are going to have to assimilate whether this is a betrayal or a stepping stone to the ultimate goal of small government. There’s no question it has caused and will cause a short-term disappointed, but that short-term will dissipate in 2-3 months as people grasp what it means.”

Chris Donatelli, an alternate Pennsylvania Paul delegate, said he understood the politics behind the endorsement but was still annoyed by it.

“I’m sure he did that with his father’s knowledge, but why did he have to say anything at all,” said Donatelli, of Macungie. “Why didn’t he just keep quiet and stay in the background?”

Donatelli, like many Paul supporters, responds with robust dogma when pressed on the inevitable choice between Romney or President Barack Obama in November.

“I’m not giving up. We’re still going full bore,” he said before offering this cryptic postulation: “Everybody wants Obama done with, [but] I still may throw my vote as a write-in for Ron Paul.”

Such fervent ambiguity from hardcore Paul supporters has kept Romney deferential to Paul. Speculation once ran rampant during the GOP primaries that the two rivals were in cahoots.

“They have had a respectful relationship,” said Ivers, Paul’s Iowa campaign chairman. “But Romney knows Ron Paul’s not going to bend.”

Meanwhile most evangelical Christians and tea party budget hawks have dialed down their flagrant antipathy toward the Massachusetts moderate. But some still remain unconvinced.

Paul’s supporters are even more enigmatic, according to Bob Goodman, a Bradford native who ran most of Paul’s New England primaries.

Pragmatic new supporters will reluctantly turn to Romney, Goodman said. But the stalwarts who’ve supported Paul for years will find it much harder to stomach a candidate who has changed positions so casually and with such frequency that even many Republicans privately speculate he stands for nothing.

“A lot of the things [Paul] supports, they’re not finding in Mitt Romney,” Goodman said. “I think we can be sure some of them will stay home. Because a lot of Ron’s people are cast in concrete with a lot of this stuff, it’s hard for them to turn their beliefs around, hold their nose and support someone.”

But for Paul diehards, sitting out the election is unthinkable.

“The people that are energized by this, I can’t conceive of them staying at home,” said Michael Vasovski, Paul’s South Carolina campaign chairman. “They’re going to do something.”