Is Arizona Senator John McCain facing an opposition-free Republican convention where it’ll be clear, conflict-free sailing as he wins the delegate count to make him the nominee and shapes a platform to his personal liking? According to the Los Angeles Times’ Andrew Malcomb, the answer is “nope”: Rep. Ron Paul’s forces will be there and they have other ideas:

…..[Q]uietly, largely under the radar of most people, the forces of Rep. Ron Paul have been organizing across the country to stage an embarrassing public revolt against Sen. John McCain when Republicans gather for their national convention in St. Paul at the beginning of September.

Paul’s presidential candidacy has been correctly dismissed all along in terms of winning the nomination. He was even excluded as irrelevant by Fox News from a nationally-televised GOP debate in New Hampshire.

But what’s been largely overlooked is Paul’s candidacy as a reflection of a powerful lingering dissatisfaction with the Arizona senator among the party’s most conservative conservatives. As anticipated a month ago in The Ticket, that situation could be exacerbated by today’s expected announcement from former Republican Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia for the Libertarian Party’s presidential nod, a slot held by Paul in 1988.

And, the Washington Times reports, Barr is notably unpersuaded by GOP establishment types calling him and pleading with him not to run. So McCain will face Republican opposition from within (Paul) and outside (Barr) his party.

But it’s what happens at the convention that could be ticklish for McCain.

Since most of the convention will be considered dullsville by most of the news media with a foregone conclusion, little drama, the Paul story could get extra focus if Paul forces come up with some great quotes, angry followers, etc that could add the beloved conflict to what was supposed to be zzzzzz-er scripted coronation.

Still, the Democrats shouldn’t be grinning. As Malcomb notes, BOTH PARTIES now face divisions within them that could hurt them at the ballot box. “Nevermind Ralph Nader…” he writes.

Malcolm details the embarrassing votes McCain did not get running unopposed in many GOP primaries in recent weeks, plus other factors as well, indicating continued resistance to the Arizona Senator among conservatives. AFP reports:

While John McCain is practically assured the Republican presidential nomination, many party members are having a hard time accepting him — and showing it with symbolic votes against him in primary contests.

The Republican nomination battle has been all but decided for over two months. Still, some Republicans used the April 22 Pennsylvania primary and last week’s votes in Indiana and North Carolina to register their unhappiness with the de facto victor.

Some vote for libertarian Texan Ron Paul, who has refused to quit the race and has racked up more than one million votes, according to his campaign.

Other Republicans keep voting for former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, and former governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas — both markedly more conservative than McCain — although both have long since dropped out of the race and endorsed him.

As many as 25 percent of Republican voters want a different candidate to represent their party in the November 4 presidential election. In Pennsylvania, 27 percent opted for Huckabee or Paul; in North Carolina and Indiana on May 6, McCain opponents earned 23 percent of the vote.

The Washington Times, a conservative newspaper, calculated that McCain had garnered no more than 45 percent of the Republican vote since January.

The Paul forces have been giving money to their candidate and fighting local fights.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Paul forces have quietly taken over some local groups and this all part of a larger delegate war. In Maine, establishment forces battled and outvoted Paul’s troops at the convention. The situation in Nevada was much messier: e establishment forces had to recess the convention because Paul’s forces were so well-organized.

What’s going on?

A Paul spokesman told the Washington Post that Paul’s campaign never ended:

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) told supporters in early March, through a Web video, that he knew he was no longer in the running for the presidency, and aides said his campaign would be “winding down.” But it turns out Paul never stopped running for president.

“He put out a video in which he said victory in the conventional sense was not available to us, but there was still much the campaign could try to accomplish,” Ron Paul 2008 spokesman Jesse Benton said yesterday. “People in the press reported that as him dropping out when he was not dropping out.”

Paul’s campaign has shrunk from a high of more than 150 staffers before Super Tuesday on Feb. 5 to around 15, according to Benton, and his record-breaking Internet fundraising operation has turned off its online ticker. But with more than $4 million in cash on hand, his campaign says there is no good reason to stop.

He is still racking up votes, for one thing, having garnered 16 percent of the vote in Pennsylvania’s Republican primary on April 22. And his supporters are still active at the grass-roots level: GOP officials abruptly canceled the Nevada state convention when it became clear that Paul’s backers outnumbered those for McCain and stood ready to take control of the delegate process.

Paul’s campaign hopes to turn such support into upward of 50 delegates for the party’s national convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul in September, where he is gunning for a speaking slot.

The Republican party apparatus — McCain bigwigs and Bush bigwigs — can’t be too happy about all of this even if there’s no chance the Paul forces will even stall McCain from getting his way on the platform or on all procedural votes. Nor can they be thrilled that Paul has predicted an Obama presidency.

Several news stories note that the fact Paul still has a lot of appeal can be seen in the fact that his supporters have made his new book “The Revolution: A Manifesto” a best seller on some best seller lists…a feat that is not simple to do and requires numbers.

To Ron Paul supporters, the convention is a place to try and clamor for change and to show their battle continues on. To traditional Republicans all of this is a pain not quite as far south as George Bush’s job approval ratings polls, but…south of the waistline.

Writes conservative blogger Ed Morrissey:

One look at the delegate count should make the scope of the nascent revolution clear. Paul has won all of 26 delegates. Even if he wangled a few dozen more through manipulations in caucus states like Nevada, at best he’ll come up with 100 delegates in a 2,200-delegate convention. That’s not a revolution, it’s a lunatic fringe.

For some reason, normally sensible people like John Derbyshire continue to put their hope for electoral victory into a candidate who consorted with and exploited racists and anti-Semites for years in order to bolster his political standing. Thankfully, that 7% Revolution will have no impact on the convention or Republican politics. Next time the libertarians want a hero, perhaps they will vet him or her more carefully.

But no matter what critics say — or will say — Paul’s supporters continue to see it a bit differently.