Outside the Beltway

Paul Beats Romney in Louisiana, Trails Dropout Thompson

Chris Lawrence · Wednesday, January 23, 2008 · 4 comments

The first part of the headline is what the Ronulans want you to take away from the results of last night’s Louisiana Republican Caucuses, where in actuality the rump of Fred Thompson’s state organization was able to secure backing for a “pro-life uncommitted” slate of delegates; delegates pledged to John McCain (who had no active precinct organization) did the best among committed delegates to the state convention, followed by the Ronulans and the Romneyites, once again demonstrating the Paul campaign’s singular ability to motivate devoted core supporters but precious few others. Interestingly enough, the candidate who one would expect to most appeal to Louisiana’s socially conservative and fiscally populist GOP base, Mike Huckabee, apparently made no showing at the caucuses, although he is on the upcoming primary ballot and might get some “pro-life uncommitted” votes nonetheless; meanwhile, Giuliani continued his streak of being a non-factor in the results.

Under Louisiana’s positively byzantine caucus rules, these delegates will go to the state convention where they will choose some, but possibly not all, of the delegates to the national convention (who are nominally uncommitted), depending on whether or not a single candidate receives an absolute majority of the vote in the presidential preference primary on Saturday, February 9th, by which time hopefully the denizens of the state will have sufficiently recovered from Mardi Gras (or “Super Duper Tuesday” as its known to political junkies) to cast ballots; should some candidate receive a majority, 20 of the state’s 47 national convention delegates will be pledged to that winner.