Clout: Paul shut out from GOP confab

THE HOUSE BAND at the Republican National Convention did a fine job Tuesday of setting the mood amid deep tensions between Mitt Romney, now his party's nominee for president, and primary foe U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas.

The band, just before controversial new RNC rules steamrolled Paul in the nominating process, belted out Cheap Trick's "I Want You to Want Me," followed by Delbert McClinton's "Standing On Shaky Ground."

What followed was enough booing and chanting to make you think you were in a Philadelphia stadium during a losing season.

Paul supporters, furious that Romney and the RNC had sealed off avenues to a floor fight for their candidate, became so raucous that party chairman Reince Priebus had to bang the gavel and ask them to show some respect.

Priebus, not a fan of things not going as planned, set the tone Tuesday morning in a conference call with reporters.

"I expect Mitt Romney to be the only name in nomination," Priebus predicted. "This is an important step legally that we have to take, and it's a very important step for our party."

Romney, needing 1,144 delegate votes to win the nomination, received 2,061 votes.

Paul received 190 delegate votes from 25 states and one territory, the Virgin Islands. He won more delegate votes than Romney from three states: Iowa, Minnesota and Nevada.

Tom Boggia of Overbrook was one of five Pennsylvania delegates who voted for Paul.

Gov. Corbett, leading the state's delegation, announced from the convention floor that 67 delegates voted for Romney.

Boggia, speaking from Tampa, said he tried to talk to his fellow delegates about resisting the changes on convention rules to let the Paul supporters speak.

"They kept saying: 'This is not how you win elections. We need to unify the party,' " Boggia said. "It was a total script."

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, chairman of the convention, ignored parliamentary-procedure pleas from Paul supporters and, in a voice vote in which "yeas" and "nays" seemed equally loud, declared the new rules a winner.

"These rules will provide a strong governing framework for our convention and for our party," Boehner told the delegates.

Rob Pepe of Upper Hanover Township, Montgomery County, ran unsuccessfully to be a delegate for Paul but was on the convention floor anyway Tuesday, shooting video of the chaos.

"Politics is a dirty game," said Pepe, who worries that the new rules will give Republican Party leaders too much power over the nomination process in the future. "It creates a top-down power structure as opposed to a bottom-up structure. It's the antithesis of what we strive for in American politics."

The convention will be treated to a video about Paul on Wednesday evening. He is not speaking because he declined to fully endorse Romney or to let his old foe's campaign review his speech.

Paul was mobbed by fans Tuesday when he visited the convention floor before things got started. He told Fox News that he doesn't plan to endorse anyone in the presidential race.

Fred Anton's first Republican convention was 1980 in Detroit.

You remember 1980. Ronald Reagan running on the theme of "Make America Great Again."

Jimmy Carter running on the theme of "malaise."

Or something like that.

Anton, chairman of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers' Association, has gone to every GOP convention since - until this year.

Anton said a civil war in Philadelphia's Republican Party may have distracted Michael Meehan, the party's general counsel.

"I've always depended on the Meehan forces to get me elected" as a delegate or alternate, Anton said. "Ron Paul's people tried to knock me off the ballot in '08, and Mike Meehan took care of that."

But this year, Anton lost.

"There didn't seem to be as much effort for the endorsed candidates," Anton said, blaming the GOP infighting.

Still, he's not all that upset at losing to a Paul delegate. There's plenty on which he agrees with Paul, especially Afghanistan.

"I'm very opposed to us being in Afghanistan," Anton said. "I think we should get out now. Neither Romney nor Obama are willing to take that issue on."

- Staff writer Gar Joseph

contributed to this report.