Looks Like It's a Moot Point

"With Romney gone, the chances of a brokered convention are nearly zero."

Which means Ron Paul publicly admits he cannot win the GOP nomination, which is no surprise. Some of us were holding out another hope.

"Of course, I am committed to fighting for our ideas within the Republican party, so there will be no third party run."

That's a significant departure from "I have no plans to run," which he's said before and which would have given him an out should he have been drafted. If I am to take him at his word, and I've backed him so far because I have, this is unequivocal, and dashes all hopes.

So he's trimming staff and focusing on his congressional seat. Fine, but where does that leave the national movement?

I guess, according to his Rah Rah team, the plan is to go to the convention and keep getting out the message . We've seen how the mainstream media has managed to stymie that tactic.

If it's a matter of getting out the message of liberty, why not do that directly instead of diluting it with the distraction of running what he admits is a losing campaign? If he focus on the one, he detracts from the other--if he wants to run a liberty message campaign, as opposed to a presidential one, what's the plan? He says he has one, but he said he had a plan to win the presidency, too.

Come back to me when you have a plan you can share, Doc, but don't expect me to stay revved up by this.

I see no reason to put any more energy or reputation into stumping for this guy if that's his final answer. Does the campaign think this will do anything but immediately discourage future contributions?

I have to admit I am tremendously disappointed by this. I don't take back anything I've said, because my support for his candidacy has always been based on the information at hand. And I certainly don't take back anything I've said about the other GOP frauds we're expected to roll over for.

So no, don't expect any "lesser of two evils" backtracking here--I'll continue to speak out on that train of abuses as I think circumstances merit--as well as doing what I can to decry Hillary and Obama outrages.

I would like to see someone from the Paul campaign give me some credible reasons why we should spend one more minute talking about his apparent non-campaign, though. And yeah, I'll still vote for him in the primary out of protest. But with this latest development, you're going to have to come up with your own reasons for doing the same.

I'm going to end this for now and put it aside before I say something based on emotion. I don't think this is an indictment on Paul's character, message or principles-- I've just never seen admitting you can't win as a particularly effective strategy for effecting change before, and unless someone can give me some compelling arguments to change my mind, I've got my own agenda to focus on.

I'm open to hearing why I shouldn't do just that.