Can the rEVOLution survive without Ron Paul?

Since Paul effectively declared the end of his campaign, missives posted on the fan page DailyPaul.com have been brutal about Paul national campaign chairman Jesse Benton, who declared, to some supporters’ disgust, that the retiring congressman simply can’t mathematically secure the GOP nomination. Benton has pleaded for “decorum” from Paul’s notoriously raucous backers, who drowned out Dick Cheney with boos at CPAC in 2010 and greeted Josh Romney with similar disdain at the Arizona convention last weekend.

“Jesse acknowledges we have stealth Ron Paul supporters among the Romney delegates,” wrote one supporter on the DailyPaul.com, whose cyber-handle is Bob-45. “He knows delegates can abstain or may even be unbound. This chops the legs off the Ron Paul campaign at a critical juncture. I no longer have any confidence in Jesse Benton; and, if Ron Paul keeps him after this, I will have lost a great deal of confidence in Ron Paul.”

Adam Kokesh, a radio host and head of Veterans for Ron Paul, went further in a web video this week, first reported by BuzzFeed, in which he said, “It’s been extremely disappointing to see that the official campaign — Jesse Benton, John Tate — have failed to contest this with the Republican Party. We didn’t come here to play nice.”…

“We’re all registered Republicans, we kind of just outmaneuvered them … we played their game and we played it better,” Ryan said. “Because we have been continuing to win the majority of delegates in a lot of states, I think there’s still a good chance that Dr. Paul will be the nominee. If he’s not, I would hope the Romney campaign would at least recognize that the Paul campaign does have a huge amount of support and [that] if the Romney campaign does want to continue governing … we do need to take a look at the platform.”