Missouri Results Unknown - Puerto Rico Votes Today

I had hoped to report the results of the Missouri caucuses to you today, but the Missouri Republican Party seems to think it's some kind of secret. They did not keep a count of how many people showed up at the caucuses for each candidate, or how many delegates were elected to go to the next level for each candidate. Theoretically, all of the delegates chosen yesterday are uncommitted, and the committed delegates will not be chosen until the state convention in June.

But we all know that's not true. Whether technically committed or not, the caucus-goers voted for delegates that promised to support a specific candidate. Why else would they fight so hard among the individual caucuses -- and fight they did (with one caucus so rowdy the police had to be called and it had to be adjourned before they even opened the session fully). But if the state party wants to keep the delegate allocations secret, there's not much us political junkies can do about it.

There shouldn't be any such problems from the Puerto Rico primary being held today, or the Illinois primary being held next Tuesday. The results (and delegate allocation) from those states should be known on the night of their primaries. Puerto Rico has 23 delegates and Illinois has 69 delegates to offer. And the way the GOP nomination race has been going, every single delegate is a valuable commodity this year -- as a brokered convention is still a real possibility.

There have been rumors in the last few days of an effort to avoid a brokered convention. It is said that Ron Paul has put out discreet feelers to the Romney campaign -- an opening gambit to arrange for a deal where Paul throws his delegate support to Romney. Paul will wind up in fourth place in delegate totals most likely, but he could well have enough delegates to put Romney over the top.

What would Paul get in return? There are two possibilities. First would be a promise to support some of Paul's nutty ideas if he is elected. I don't see that happening. Those ideas are anathema to Wall Street (and Romney), and I doubt the teabaggers and libertarians would trust Romney enough to think he would follow through on any promise he made. He has just done too much flip-flopping.

But there's another possibility -- an even scarier one. That would be for Romney to give the vice-presidential slot to Rand Paul (Ron's son). Rand Paul wants to run for president in 2016, and running this year as a vice-presidential candidate would get him a lot of exposure . The move is also likely to win the support of the teabaggers and libertarians in the party base -- two groups Romney has been unable to win over so far. The scary part for the rest of us is that it would be similar to McCain's choosing of Palin in 2008 (an effort to get votes by putting an unqualified person only a heartbeat away from the White House).

This just makes it more important than ever to re-elect President Obama this year.