The Revolution's Current Battleground: Nevada

At the state GOP convention in Nevada today, the party leadership announced they were leaving and would reconvene later. Mitt Romney, who won the Nevada caucuses, was on hand to speak on behalf of John McCain who declined an invitation to speak. Ron Paul, who placed second and ahead of McCain, was also invited to speak. Romney reportedly kept a straight face as he spoke of McCain's ability to steer the American economy in the right direction. Paul received thunderous applause and numerous standing ovations throughout his speech.

When the delegates got down to business, a rules change was approved by a 2/3 majority, which did away with the nomination committee's pre-determined slate of nominees to the national GOP convention and opened nominations from the floor. This process resulted in the election of 9 of the 31 delegate positions before the chair announced that they were taking a recess. There was no motion made, no debate, and no vote. There was no determination of a specific time or place for the reconvened convention. The convention chairman and the committee chairs simply left the building. The party leadership is indicating they will reconvene in Las Vegas (450 miles from today's convention site in Reno). This is a blatant attempt to disenfranchise Ron Paul supporters, but I'm betting there will be even more than the 700 they had in Reno - talk about blowback!

Click here to read the first report on the Nevada GOP Convention from the Reno Gazette-Journal.

Here's a blog post from a delegate to the Nevada GOP Convention, which was written a few days before today's convention. This give you an idea of how the slate of nominees presented by the nominations committee was determined.

For other examples of state conventions where the GOP leadership has used unbelievable tactics against members of its own party, just google the conventions in Missouri and Louisiana. For a candidate who supposedly has no shot of winning anything, he sure does have them on the run!