I was at the Republican county convention last night for my county. After going through all the housekeeping Roberts Rules of Order bullshit, they had to take a roll of delegates. The rules are different in every state, and their implementation varies from county to county.
I registered to be a precinct delegate, as did pretty much all of the RP people, however, that election is held in August and won't really be good for anything until 2014 election. The current county delegates were all existing precinct delegates from 2010, which means you have a lot of establishment republicans. They had a higher turnout than usual, because they were expecting us and didn't want to lose their delegate spots to RP people.
However, out of the 87 precinct delegates, 12 didn't show up so they were replaced with 12 alternates, some of them were RP people. Then when it came time to replace the 12 alternates the Republican party tried to pull a fast one and just use the existing delegate names that hadn't shown up, but the RP regional leader (who was sexy as hell by the way) called them out on it. She forced them to fill the 12 spots with volunteers that were actually present, all of which were RP people.
That's the good news. The bad news is those delegates will go to the state convention on May 18th and if any delegates don't show up, they will be replaced with alternates which may be RP people. But then from there, only a handful will go on to the national convention and I don't think the RP people have enough establishment positions to send their delegates, so don't expect a win in Michigan...this year.
However, since Michigan moved their primary up without permission from the national party, they penalized Michigan by only allowing us to send half our normal delegates, which is good since they'll mostly be Romney people. If you see on the news that the RNC has changes their mind and decided to be nice and let Michigan have all of their delegates, you'll know it's because they need more Romney delegates.
I went because I wanted to see how the "sausage is made", and I've never expected RP to win this election, but what I do see is the Republican Party is definitely being taken over at the grass roots level by RP-minded people which bodes VERY well for future elections. Now I see why they are taking this strategy - it isn't to win in 2012, it's to reshape the Republican Party for years to come. The Republican Party you see today will not exist in 8-12 years, it will be a much younger, more Libertarian party.
I registered to be a precinct delegate, as did pretty much all of the RP people, however, that election is held in August and won't really be good for anything until 2014 election. The current county delegates were all existing precinct delegates from 2010, which means you have a lot of establishment republicans. They had a higher turnout than usual, because they were expecting us and didn't want to lose their delegate spots to RP people.
However, out of the 87 precinct delegates, 12 didn't show up so they were replaced with 12 alternates, some of them were RP people. Then when it came time to replace the 12 alternates the Republican party tried to pull a fast one and just use the existing delegate names that hadn't shown up, but the RP regional leader (who was sexy as hell by the way) called them out on it. She forced them to fill the 12 spots with volunteers that were actually present, all of which were RP people.
That's the good news. The bad news is those delegates will go to the state convention on May 18th and if any delegates don't show up, they will be replaced with alternates which may be RP people. But then from there, only a handful will go on to the national convention and I don't think the RP people have enough establishment positions to send their delegates, so don't expect a win in Michigan...this year.
However, since Michigan moved their primary up without permission from the national party, they penalized Michigan by only allowing us to send half our normal delegates, which is good since they'll mostly be Romney people. If you see on the news that the RNC has changes their mind and decided to be nice and let Michigan have all of their delegates, you'll know it's because they need more Romney delegates.
I went because I wanted to see how the "sausage is made", and I've never expected RP to win this election, but what I do see is the Republican Party is definitely being taken over at the grass roots level by RP-minded people which bodes VERY well for future elections. Now I see why they are taking this strategy - it isn't to win in 2012, it's to reshape the Republican Party for years to come. The Republican Party you see today will not exist in 8-12 years, it will be a much younger, more Libertarian party.
