Randall Terry Beats Out Barack Obama in Oklahoma Primary?

Not only has no Democrat presidential candidate won Oklahoma since 1964, and not only did President Obama lose every single county in Oklahoma in 2008, but, amazingly, the president didn't even sweep the delegates in tuesday's 2012 Oklahoma Democratic Primary. 

Further, and if possible, more bizzarely, the stray delegate (or delegates, according to some sources the president dropped two) to this summer's Democratic National Convention in Charlotte was won by a man that can easily be described as the anti-Obama, Randall Terry.

Randall Terry has been arrested more than 40 times in anti-abortion protests, and once chained himself to a sink in an abortion clinic. His closest link to the president is probably that he was arrested at Obama's controversial commencement speech at Notre Dame in 2009. Given his anti-abortion views and his fairly recent conversion to Catholicism, he has much more in common with GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich than the sitting Democratic president.

Yet he'll have at least one, and probably two delegates who will (ostensibly) be obligated to vote for him to be the Democratic Nominee.

I remember when I was eight years old, watching the 1972 Republican Convention on television (yes, I'm that bad; I also skipped school in third grade to watch the Watergate hearings), and was surprised and amused when a delegate from Texas announced that their delegation had cast a vote for Roger Staubach. People laughed and cheered; it was a good joke.

I don't think the same reaction will be forthcoming in Charlotte this summer if the head of the Oklahoma Delegation is forced to say the name "Randall Terry" from the floor. No doubt Oklahoma (and perhaps national) Democratic bigwigs are already looking for legal methods of negating the will of the voters. Or, at least, 18% of the registered Democrat voters who bothered to go to the polls on Super Tuesday. 

Not that you can blame them. I don't mean to validate any attempt to thwart the honest results of a fair election, but, wow, put yourself in their shoes.

It just looks bad.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons