"I think the onus is on the claimant to demonstrate that politics are in fact involved."
When has there ever been a technical decision made on the technical merits?
It's always politics. Scratch that. It's only politics.
Pieter Hintjens' telling of how RedHat spiked the process around AMQP shows that RedHat is no different from any other player. http://hintjens.com/blog:125#toc15
I had a brief flirtation with a standardization effort. Standards bodies are just another battlefield for belligerents. And I have no problem with that.