Liberty Maven

After the first round of voting at the West Virginia convention Ron Paul was in last place with 10% of the delegates. The Ron Paul delegates then brokered a deal with the Mike Huckabee delegates to help put him over the top in first place ahead of Mitt Romney. The McCain delegates did the same. All of this to defeat Mitt Romney. The catch is that the Huckabee delegation agreed to give up 3 delegate slots for Ron Paul delegates in return for supporting Huckabee.

If this deal wasn’t brokered Ron Paul would have received 0 delegates in West Virginia today. On the surface this looks bad. How can we trust the Huckabee delegation to actually follow through on their offer? We can’t. But taking a chance at getting 3 delegates is better than getting zero. That is the bottom line.

Apparently, Romney delegates courted the Ron Paul delegation as well. The decision was made to go with Huckabee because giving him more delegates brings us closer to a brokered convention since he had the third most delegates going in.

For some words about this from the Ron Paul campaign about this check here.

Update: For more information about the national Huckabee campaign denying the deal with Ron Paul in West Virginia see this post.