On Saturday I fulfilled my duties as a Seward County Delegate to the Nebraska State Republican Convention. So if anything goes wrong in the world in the next 4 years you can pretty much blame me. I road to the convention with Mark Kolterman. He’s the new chairman of the Seward County Republican Party, and he told me that the day after the county convention he received phone calls from the Omaha World Harold and the Nebraska Republican Party chairman asking if it was true that Ron Paul supporters had taken over the Seward County convention. He assured them that that had not happened, but that two of the four Seward county delegates were Ron Paul supporters. Mark’s thoughts on the Ron Paul supporters were echoed multiple times at the state convention: We will need everyone we can get to elect John McCain in November. In a move that I think surprised all of the Ron Paul supporters in attendance, one of the first orders of business was to seat those delegates who had been elected in “irregular” county conventions. These delegates were almost entirely Ron Paul supporters and it was an impressive display of inclusiveness.
All in all there were 54 Ron Paul supporters out of about 340 total delegates. We were only loosely organized; about two weeks prior to the convention we formed a Nebraska chapter of the Republican Liberty Caucus. We had buttons to identify each other and a handful of candidates that we wanted to send to the National Convention. It was fun. “Back room” deals were made with other blocks of voters to send delegates to the national convention. We are sending one of the nine congressional district delegates (this was unexpected as it was quite unlikely) and a few at large delegates and alternates. In fact, all of our delegates were elected. We should have had more ready to send, but we were all new at this.
We were not at all ready to offer resolutions or changes to the state party platform, and the amendments that were offered were soundly defeated (although on one a division of the house was called for. That was exciting). One of the amendments what was offered by the delegation from one of Nebraska’s Western counties we an eleven point amendment. Some of them were poorly worded and no one was in the mood to debate them all separately, so, although I heard several (non-liberty caucus) people say they agreed with most of the amendment, it went down in flames.
There were tons of speeches from all of our (many) Nebraska Republicans in office and one very vicious speech by the Chairman of the National Republican Party. The speeches were very similar and were along the lines of, “We’ve been acting like democrats, we have to get back to our roots, we’ll all have to work hard to elect John McCain, because his Republican ideas are the only way to protect our great country.” But it took several hours the way they said it. Interestingly, Nebraska (republican) senator Chuck Hagel was a Persona non grata at the convention. He was not mentioned once and was often referenced in mysterious terms: “She was working in his office and it was suggested that she lay low for awhile, so she’s not at the convention.”
There were lots of other things that I found interesting, but this post is already too long.
I just want to say that I did my patriotic part – I helped him pick out what to wear.
So what is it again that you did at the convention?
Mostly, I kept saying to myself, “what would Peggy do if she were here?”.
Now I thought I was the first commenter, dnag it.
The Ron Paul movement is building, I just went to a site called Barr Paul 08 or the link is http://www.BarrPaul08.com Would they have a site if Paul wasnt going to run on the LP ticket with Barr.?? We better be on the look out for this, You hear that movement coming GOP. You wont have a chance in NOV if these two join forces. Looks like you should of Backed a Conservative instead of a Puppet. I signed the Petition asking the LP and Barr to put Paul on the ticket. You can sign the petition to at http://www.BarrPaul08.com or I think they have the petition at another site also I think its http://www.VeepPeek.com Go Ron Paul!!!!
I can see it now… Congressman Sommerer.
But I don’t think you’ll find the US Congress so stimulating, and I don’t think you’ll get even half as much accomplished, even with two years to do it!
I’m thinking President – because I’d love a crack at that First Lady job. Nossir, I wouldn’t embarrass our country at all! Not one little bit!
You’d be a fabulous first lady. I’m close by… can I come over for tea?
How will your delegates hold up?
Wow. Reading all that was almost like listening to a political speech – almost like I was there… *yawn*
Those irregular delegates should just start eating two tablespoons of ground flax seeds every morning. They’d be fine in a jiffy.
This has nothing to do with the convention.
But I thought it was fitting.
http://flickr.com/photos/chrys/2329243533/
Ha! I love it! I just made two bacon mats yesterday, and I have some leftover bacon….. hmm…..
Curiously enough, the software that that bacon sculpture represents is the software I use for our school website.
I love it, a first lady who plays the ukulele.
How many delegates is Nebraska sending to Minnesota and of them, how many are for John McCain and how many are for Ron Paul?
I’m doing these numbers from memory, but I believe it is a total of 33 delegates and 4 are members of the Republican Liberty Caucus.
So the BIG question is…
Did “Miss Delegates 2008” get elected after all that self-promotion?
HA! Good question!
Dnag it. I forgot to check on her delegation.
you mean delegations …
I don’t think my sister wants you checking out…er….on her delegations. Is there a pictureless list somewhere you could reference? I’m really curious if all that promotion actually worked or not.