08/29/12 – Jay Lake – The Scott Horton Show

All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
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Okay, so our first guest on the show today is Jay Lake.
Welcome to the show, Jay.
How are you doing?
We're doing fine.
We're wet and soggy down here in Tampa, Florida, and a little beat up, but we're okay.
It sure was raining when I left.
I've never taken off in the rain before.
I was there at the Paul Festival a couple of days ago.
Yeah, that was pretty gnarly.
But anyway, so sorry you're all soggy.
Hope someone will bring an umbrella.
So tell us, what is it that you're doing in Tampa?
Well, just wanted to correct you.
You can't bring an umbrella.
They won't allow an umbrella to the convention.
You know, that might be, that might just scare people.
So we're not allowed to bring an umbrella.
And no whole fruit either.
You're not allowed to do that either.
In other words, an apple, you can't bring an apple.
You can't bring an orange.
You can't bring a pear.
No, that's not going to be allowed.
And how's this?
You can't even bring a bottle of water on the floor.
So you can't drink when you can actually hydrate yourself when you're on the floor either.
Well, what's the point of that?
It's the same reason you can't bring one on a plane.
No reason.
I can't honestly turn around and tell you that.
We looked at this list and we said, are you kidding me?
But we were allowed to bring our cell phones and I was thankful at least for that.
Yeah, that's good.
Hey, everybody, throw your phone in a bag.
Don't worry, you'll get it back later.
Yeah, yeah.
You can.
So wait, so where are you from and what exactly are you doing down there at the Republican Convention?
Okay.
I'm from the state of Nevada.
Back to Henderson, Nevada, and I was sitting on the Credentials Committee.
So you're a delegate to the convention?
Yes, I'm a delegate to the convention.
I sit as a bound poll delegate and my wife also is a bound poll delegate and she sits on Rules Committee.
So if your audience wants to hear some in-depth things that took place here, I mean, you have some people that are right in the middle of things.
Right.
Well, now from what I've read, a lot has taken place and, you know, I don't know if you have a list in your head of all the outrageous in chronological order or in order of most outrageous or exactly how it works, but it seems like the boss has really bent over backwards to just completely add insult to injury every way they could.
Absolutely.
That's the way it seems.
I mean, I thought that one of the most peculiar things was we knew that when we put all these signatures for the five states, because the rules stated that we needed a five-state plurality to have Dr. Poll nominated.
So we worked really, really hard with a number of people from these states to make sure that we had that.
And we had our forms already signed, everything like that.
Well, now, even on that, we had already been counting to see if we're going to have five, you know, weeks and weeks out, right, a month out.
And the GOP was already moving to screw up the Louisiana delegation and Colorado and Massachusetts.
So when you guys came up with your five states anyway, it was minus some of the ones that you had been counting on, and it was some new states that you didn't know you were going to have.
But the Paulians ended up getting the five anyway, right?
Absolutely.
I mean, because that's really a big deal, you know, because we knew about the whole five rule all along, and the Romney people moved, and they thought that they had already won that fight by screwing over the Louisiana and the Colorado delegations, for example.
Absolutely.
And, you know, I think anybody who has a fair and open mind would, you know, and just look at the states that were contested.
Just look at those states, and if anybody would have viewed those states with that clear open mind, you would see that every state that was contested was a Ron Paul-heavy state.
I mean, doesn't that, at least that fact, raise a question?
So, in other words, those are the states that have the problems.
It's because the RNC...
It's not according to the RNC plan or the Mitt Romney plan.
I mean, that's really what it is there.
So we had a lot of delegates from multiple states who were elected correctly by their states, by the people of their states, and were then kicked out by the menacing power of the RNC.
They were going to use some form of questioning in order to make sure that they didn't appear, and they would then insert Romney delegates, and that's what they did.
Well, and then they changed the rules when you got your five anyway.
They said, oh, well, you need eight.
But they just made it up, right?
Yeah, that was another thing.
You know, of course they weren't expecting us to get five, but they truly, truly do not understand, and they underestimate the tenacity of the Paul supporters.
You know, if you take away one, we're going to try for two, and we'll dig up three, and we'll dig up four, and we'll turn over every rock and shake the bushes and try to pull us together, and that's what we did.
I mean, even when we would speak to campaign representatives of the Paul campaign, they were adamant that we didn't have the five, but we did, and as a matter of fact, we had even more than that.
But we figured that at this point, five was what was needed.
There was a contest committee where they were actually trying to change the five to ten, and it got knocked down.
So we knew they were going to pull some shenanigans, but we were going to play by the rules, and we were going to present the five states, and actually we presented six.
So if we had presented eight, they would have changed the rules to ten, and if we presented ten, they changed the rule with thirty, or, you know, we knew what was going to happen there.
Yeah.
Well, it's funny, I was reading in Justin Romano's column, he's quoting Mother Jones, the leftist, or, well, not really, progressive magazine, I guess, and they're talking about, like in a way, basically taking the Republican Party's side and saying how they're just trying to prevent mayhem by the Ron Paul people, mayhem being, let y'all nominate Paul so that he can lose anyway.
They didn't have enough delegates to actually secure the nomination, but mayhem would have been letting the Paulians nominate their man, maybe letting him give a speech to the crowd, and Justin says, man, this is America, not North Korea, but maybe it is North Korea.
I mean, this is actually, you think about this in context, and I think that the Republican Party leaders, Karl Rove and them, they might not have really been thinking about just how, you know, Stalinist this looks.
It's ridiculous what they did, you know?
It truly is, it really, really is, and people need to wake up to this.
I mean, they just, I mean, they really need to wake up.
You know, I have a fantasy where if he was actually nominated, the whole place would rise up and choose him over Romney or something, but that wasn't going to happen in a million years.
Romney's got 200 million in his bank account, he's Rove's man, he's the nominee.
It's as simple as that.
And we do that.
We've made this point all along.
We're not ignorant of the numbers.
We knew where we stood.
We knew how low we were, and this was just an effort by the poll supporters to have Ron Paul, who was a 12-time elected Republican congressman.
I mean, that in itself should be enough reason.
Never mind a three-time presidential candidate.
We just wanted him to have his 15 minutes to be able to speak and give him the respect that we feel he justly deserves.
And yes, would we raise the roof absolutely out of respect and give him the show of respect that we wanted?
We knew that we weren't going to garner the numbers.
I mean, are they that afraid to go in and turn the process into this dictator-like action that they're taking?
I mean, it's ridiculous.
We knew that our paperwork needed to be presented to the Secretary of the Convention.
We had RNC councils' instructions that were for a previous convention, and we were studying what this council had said, and that the forms needed to be filled and needed to be presented to the Secretary of the Convention.
And in our research, we felt that that was the process that the RNC wanted.
So we set about, once we had our forms, we waited for the Secretary of the Convention to be announced, and then went to present her the forms.
Well, that wasn't...
And we knew that this was where things were going to get funny, too, because you could just as easily hide a person in that huge convention center as anything.
So we were told by people of the staff—I don't want to say her staff, because I can't turn around and tell.
I don't know who her staff is.
But when we requested to see the Secretary of the Convention, there were people with headphones and stuff like that who turned around and said she would be out.
We stood there.
We waited.
We waited.
And we knew the clock was ticking.
So, of course, we were starting to get very antsy, because we only had...
We had a time limit that we were supposed to get in by.
Well, what's this about?
I read this morning that there was a bus driver who got, quote-unquote, lost, where it was obvious he wasn't really lost.
He was just keeping the Virginia delegation or somebody else away from this Rules Committee meeting?
Yeah.
Well, let me finish.
I'll finish with the Secretary of the Convention, then we'll get back.
Okay.
I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
But that's okay.
But then...
So we were standing outside where we believed the Secretary was, and the staff was, and they were, of course, telling us, you know, just wait here.
Just wait here.
Just wait here.
And then we were informed, well, the Secretary is actually by the Nevada delegation, and she's wearing a red blinzer with a black top, so she should be easily found.
Well, we looked everywhere.
I mean, from one end of the convention to the other, and that wasn't happening.
Well, what wound up did happening was that she wasn't dressed in a red blazer or a black top.
She had evidently changed her wardrobe to a gray suit that...where she wasn't identifiable.
It's just...
It's amazing.
The stories just go on and on.
People will say, this didn't happen.
This didn't happen.
But it did happen.
But we did finally get to her and present the denomination forms of the states.
And the day of the election, we said, you know, we presented six, and it really wouldn't have mattered if we had presented all 50.
It wasn't going to...you know, they just weren't going to accept it.
It's not in the plan.
It's not in the orchestrated event, so...
Amazing.
And then, can you tell us about the bus driver story?
I can only tell you what I heard with the bus driver story.
I was getting texts, of course, all during the morning, and there was a gentleman who was on that Virginia bus who was a very...he's an elderly gentleman who was a very, very well-known rules-maker and, I guess, an astute parliamentarian who would fight rules.
I was also told, not a Ron Paul supporter, but just a fair man.
And if something was wrong with the RNC rules, he would stand and fight, just out of fairness, because that's where the man's convictions were, that he happened to be on that bus.
So with these rules changes, we're going to go through without his objecting to them.
So I guess if there's some type of subliminal plot there, I don't know.
I don't know.
It's surreal.
It truly is.
All right.
And then, can you tell us about Ron Paul's appearance on the House floor?
I wasn't even thinking he was going to show up at all.
Well, we were told that they were going to let him meet the delegations, his supporting delegations.
They would bring him in.
Was that where...
I wasn't quite expecting...when I heard the uproar, I mean, it was like this huge gigantic shout that went through the arena, and enough that everybody turned, and we didn't know at that point.
You know, we were so busy going around, doing the convention business.
I mean, you know, a lot of our members probably lost eight pounds that day, just the way we were running around.
But when we saw him come in, yeah, he had quite a round of applause for when he came in there.
He went out of his way to meet as many delegates as he could and thanked them for their support.
Yeah, it was amazing sitting there watching those people chanting, let him speak, let him speak.
And it didn't mean a thing to the people in charge.
They're just like, whatever, no.
The last thing in the world we're going to do is let him speak.
In fact, he told the New York Times, well, in fact, in his speech that he gave at a separate rally, he said, oh, yeah, they said I could speak as long as I speak on Monday, which is the joke being that that was the day that they canceled for the rain, and it was going to be an empty room.
But then also, they also wanted to vet his speech.
Right.
Yeah.
That's what he told the New York Times, that they had to read it and he had to endorse Romney.
And he said, no, thanks.
And he.
Right.
Well, he wasn't.
You know, we all know people who followed the man's career.
You know, he doesn't compromise those principles.
He's not going to do that.
That's really of no surprise.
Yeah.
But I just find it interesting.
But it's amazing that they put those kind of rules on him, you know?
Yeah.
I mean, you think about back when it was and this is going way back in history, I guess you kind of have to.
But like, you know, the fight between Nelson Rockefeller and Barry Goldwater, where, you know, you have to have to turn their back on Nelson Rockefeller.
And they had a big booing match and this and that kind of thing.
Like, aren't we Americans?
We're supposed to be a little bit cantankerous and things like that.
Right.
Have a little fight and then lose anyway.
Right.
That's our game.
That's how we do it.
But no.
Well, yeah.
Isn't isn't that isn't that part of our isn't that part of what we are?
I mean, we don't lay down what we debate to the max.
And yes, we you know, we're very verbal and and and we say what we what we feel right.
I think billionaires always get the best of us, but still at least let us fight about it a little.
Come on.
Well, again, you know, this is my first national convention and I've spoken with many people who have been to numerous conventions, national conventions.
And it's it's quite unlike any county convention.
It's quite unlike any state convention.
It's extremely, extremely orchestrated.
It's not like you're not going to get up to the microphone and and be able to debate an issue.
They don't allow it when we when we try to put motions in our microphones turned off.
They have microphones and get the delegations and they also have phones that you could pick up a phone and speak to somebody.
But when you go to object to a motion or you go to oppose something, those are turned off.
You don't you don't have that.
And even when you realize this, so you, of course, get all your states together, you know, your messaging system and I got to oppose something so that we have a verbal opposition to a to a motion.
The chairman will just we'll just ignore it and just move on, even though we're all do I hear any nays?
And when the nays are all so loud that the building shake and then it's against what they're trying to pass.
You'll just totally ignore it, just like with the rules change, but the rules change.
In all fairness, there was as much opposition.
I thought that we that the nays actually were louder.
So I spoke with other people who were seated in other areas of the arena on other levels, because, you know, sometimes things aren't as they appear.
And I said, is it my imagination that the nate with the nays louder?
I mean, audibly louder than than the affirmative.
And he said, most definitely it was well, that just it just wasn't going to fly.
So and and as soon as we knew that that wasn't going to fly, everybody screamed for division so that we could get a an actual physical count.
And that, of course, was not going to happen.
It wasn't even acknowledged.
So and it's funny, because we have on film how the speaker is actually reading a teleprompter and we have it recorded at the teleprompter is before the voting before the days of the nays were even recorded.
The teleprompters already saying, in the opinion of the chair, the the affirmative has it.
It hasn't even taken place.
And so it doesn't matter what you say.
That's so cool.
You go.
Yeah.
And we have it all.
We have it all on video, you know, that the teleprompters is bringing it up before it even takes place.
Yeah.
And I don't even mean it's so cool that you busted them.
I mean, I think it's so cool that this is even that it happened this way, like the the future historian in me or whatever, just thinks this is a great little chapter.
The you know, absolutely no Saturday Night Live style farcical nature of the Republican Party.
I can't.
I don't know.
Convention.
I could have done it.
I don't know.
Saturday Night Live could have even done it better than that.
I mean, because I mean, everybody was just looking at one another with joy at the opening going.
Are you kidding me?
You know, so I mean, the Republicans are too clumsy to pull something like this off in any kind of smooth way.
It has to be the most ridiculous, ham handed sort of sabotage, you know?
Yeah.
I mean, when you have when you when you control the mic, when you control the agenda, when you control the podium, when you control every single thing that happens, then the rules just don't apply anymore.
They just don't apply.
You know, you have a body that has made itself very familiar with the rules, because that's how we're going to operate.
At least that's what that's what the organization tells you.
Those are the rules.
That's the that's that's the way that it works.
And then when you go to to utilize those rules, it's totally disregarded.
So at least at this level, this is, you know, it's it's it's all show.
It's all show.
It's all for the cameras.
Well, you know, I saw over at Hot Air, Michelle Malkin's blog, and they are certainly no friends of the Paulians whatsoever.
They have a whole thing about how, you know, the Paul, the Ron Paul faction were basically used as cover so that the rest of the Republicans wouldn't be so outraged when they changed the rules the way they were.
But the way that they wrote it at the hot air thing was that this is an attack on all movement conservatives, too.
This is the establishment versus the people Paulians are not.
And they were even the way they wrote it was this is not repeat is not just a Ron Paul people thing or something.
Everyone look, pay attention.
This is any of us are from now on the Romney's have it forever, right?
You know, we were we were we were trying so hard to get that across to some of the delegates that what we what we were fighting for when we were fighting against those rules changes.
We're fighting for future delegations.
We're fighting for the next people who have to come here.
And what you're getting, you're taking away the process.
You're taking away the power of the delegations from the states.
That's what we're fighting for.
When it's not just us, we're fighting everyone here.
But you know, sometimes they sometimes you you're talking to people that no matter what, no matter what, you know, they're going to go they're going to go along with it with with how the party sees things.
And other people will wake up one day.
They will.
They just haven't woken up yet.
And they'll they'll understand that the poll, the poll delegates fight for the liberty and personal freedoms of all delegates.
We don't.
It's not an our thing.
It's not a candidate thing.
It's it's the principles, the principles we that we espouse.
So all right, everybody, that is Jay Lake, Nevada state delegate to the Republican Party Convention in Tampa, Florida.
Thanks very much for your time.
I really appreciate you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Bye.