In the Nevada caucus, Ron Paul finished second behind Mitt Romney and ahead of John McCain.  So it shouldn’t be a surprise that at the state convention yesterday the good doctor from Texas had lots of support.

Also, unfortunately, it isn’t a surprise that party officials in Nevada shut down the state convention to prevent Ron Paul delegates from being elected to the national convention.

This is from the Las Vegas Sun’s account of the convention:

Call 2008 the year of the great tumult, the year of the outsiders, the young, the tech-savvy who are changing American politics.

Although most of the attention, money and passion lie with the long saga of the Democratic presidential contest, Nevada’s state Republican convention here offered evidence of the ground shifting across the spectrum, with an actual earthquake Friday night serving as an apt symbol.

Rep. Ron Paul, a Republican with a libertarian’s heart, followed his second-place finish in Nevada’s January presidential caucus by out-organizing the state’s Republican establishment. In the process, the Paulites embarrassed the campaign of Arizona Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president.

They seemed to make up more than half of the 1,300 or so state delegates to the convention. They won a key procedural vote on the rules, and their boisterous presence created significant delays, causing the convention chairman, Bob Beers, a state senator from Las Vegas, to recess the convention without selecting delegates to the national convention. The state convention is to resume at a later date.

It is a sad state of affairs that the state Republican parties continue to be openly hostile to Ron Paul supporters who support the best principles of the party’s stated principles.