could win. again, we may well win in minnesota. and do far better in colorado than yesterday s polls indicate. i want to explain what i think is going on here. i sort of need a prop. i don t have a prop. let s say these are the people at the caucus, the people at the caucus love rick santorum, we love rick santorum. after the caucus meets, and they vote on who they support, the people running the caucus, the local republican officials say okay, people, you ve expressed your views, you love rick santorum, you can leave now if you want but we ll stick around and do party business. you can stay or go it s up to you. everybody goes yay, we voted for rick santorum, we love him, we ll launder our sweater vests. after the people leave, what happens in the party business part of the meeting, is that the delegates get chosen to go to the state convention. the convention is where they are going to assign delegates to go to the national convention where
the votes overruled by a single state appointed manager. yet, even though benton harbor s locally elected officials had no power, a hallowed out husk of their former democracy remain. in november, benton harbor held elections. they chose a new mayor, for instance. when it came time for the mayor to take the step of picking a mayor pro tem, a deputy mayor, the new mayor was not allowed to do that. the emergency manager had to carry out the mundane step for him, because only the emergency manager has power to do anything in that town anymore. now benton harbor has a powerless, elected mayor and powerless mayor pro tem both serving at the pleasure of the state-appointed, unelected emergency manager who has unilateral authority over everything in the town. one man, one town, complete control. benton harbor is a very broke and very broken town. one thing they have got is a publicly owned radio station.
not nearly as amazing as the media freakout this week over a rule the obama administration finalized three weeks ago. mandating health insurance coverage without a co-pay for contraception, a rule that is a lot like the laws in effect in 28 states. in fact, the obama administration s rule was less stringent than the existing rules in these state where everybody has to cover birth control, no exceptions, not even for churches. the obama rule let churches out of the requirement, nonetheless republicans have been very very angry about the idea, they want hospitals and universities affiliated with the catholic church to be exempt with the rule as well. today, president obama announced a compromise of sorts, everybody except women who work for churches that is, everybody still gets access to birth control through their health insurance but universities and hospitals associated with the catholic church who don t want to provide insurance that covers birth control, they don t have to pay for
minnesota, we won in colorado, and missouri is yet to be seen. and we think we probably won in nevada, because we re counting the precinct votes. the only thing that i might add there is nothing wrong or deceptive about this, anybody can stay. woody allen says 80% of success is showing up. our people show up. and they have a right to do that, and they are committed, and so they are running as delegates at the precinct level to the county convention where they will again run as delegates from the county convention to the state convention. are they being open at the precinct level, are they being open about the fact they will support ron paul no matter what happened at the caucus or is this sort of a sneak attack strategy? no, they are open. anybody can stay, and anybody can vote, in fact, the party is resisting this as often as they can. there have been occasions where they dismissed the meeting and relocate in another place to try
sorry to interrupt there. when you say the republican party changed the rules in a way to gain the system for mitt romney, what rules do you think they changed to mitt romney s benefit? of course florida was moved up because it was a state that would help him, nevada and arizona were moved up because they were states with large lds population. it was proportional in the south, so that if romney pulls 20%, 30% in the south, but because of his faith a lot of evangelicals go to gingrich or santorum or another candidate, he still would get something, he wouldn t be shut out. in a winner take all, if he s shutout in the south he can t get the nomination because remember, the south is loaded for the in the gop because it often votes in the presidential elections for gop. it s not just population in the south. it s based on how their past voting patterns have been. there s a lot of delegates in the south. so in that sense it was gained and even the primary the system,