Roxi
Member
- Joined
- Jun 12, 2007
- Messages
- 5,664
Just wanted to give my personal account -
We were told we should be there at 6:30 am for credentialing to avoid not being let in because the cutoff time was 9am. We arrived at 6:30 and it was a breeze because almost no one was there. My letter hadn't specified if I was a delegate or alternate so I wasn't sure but it turned out that I was a delegate! WooT!
The convention hall before it was filled
After credentialing we socialized for a bit until the meeting was supposed to come to order at 9am. Turns out, the rules are that no matter when a delegate shows up they will be let in, but also that the meeting couldn't even start until anyone who was in line before 9am was through the line. This turned into a giant mess considering a LOT of people were still in line at 9am
So back outside we went to hang out for a bit. This guy was awesome, he asked us to hold his sign while he got checked in so I said okay and one lady handing out Romney stickers said "jump on the bandwagon girls" and another Romney guy told me I was shameful. Lulz
The meeting Finally came to order 2 hours late and got started with speakers including our Governor Billy Long (nice face right?)
and some other people running for state offices. They all had some decent things to say but a standing senator (Todd Akins) actually said "Ron Paul was right when he said we should audit the Fed) which was cool because he was the ONLY one to even mention RP all day. After the speakers we elected a chairman, between David Cole (who's a lying asshole) and Brent Stafford (the St Charles guy who was arrested at their caucus) and of course David won (1,144 to 707).
The credentialing report said we had 1,194 delegates in attendance and there were originally 2,123 on the list to take convention so a lot apparently didn't show up.
The two options for secretary were a woman named Pat and a known RP supporter Amanda Kershaw, and the chairman moved to call with a majority not to do a second vote claiming that Pat won 2/3rds by visual confirmation. I wasn't confident that was the case but the chairman wasn't hearing anything and at this point it became pretty obvious what the guy was about.
At that point there was a giant cluster f**k because they were trying to figure out credentialing for the alternates to fill the seats that were for delegates who didn't show. For at LEAST an hour everyone was milling about trying to figure out what was happening while the chairman repeatedly said "about 5 more minutes we'll get started" After a while it was lunchtime and people started to get frustrated because stuff got started late anyway and now the GOP seemed to have their heads up their asses so someone called a motion to go to lunch, which had the Romney crowd up in arms because they were afraid their people wouldn't come back after lunch to vote on slates, so they protested, which required an amendment to offer a 90 min compromise on lunch (instead of the original stated 2 hours) which started another amendment and by the time we were voting people had no clue what was being voted on. The chairman thought he was funny and started joking about voting on the amendment to the amendment to the resolution of the amendment. :
: Considering the discussion of lunch took almost 40 minutes the GOP announced they had finished credentialing so the motion to convene was struck and it was decided (by the Romney people) to go ahead and vote on the slates.
They had reduced it to two slates. The "Show me Unity" slate comprised of 16 Romney pledges and 9 santorum pledges, and the "Life and Liberty" Which was RP and a few Santorum pledges. There was a standing vote with the unity slate receiving 1,025 votes and the Life and Liberty slate receiving 781 votes. After the slate was decided we convened for lunch and it was announced that after lunch we would be voting on the Missouri GOP platform. They believed that most of us wouldn't show back up to vote on this. (turned out to be true, I believe only about 2/3rds of us showed back up)
When we came back the Romney people were vying to vote to accept the platform as it stood (even though there were 9 amendments turned into the chairman) and our people were debating against certain provisions in the platform (mainly under the security sections). A Romney guy who said he fought in Korea got up and said everyone should support the Patriot Act in it's entirety and if we didn't have anything to hide we shouldn't have a problem with it. A vet from Iraq took the mic and got boo'd. The Romney people behind us were bitching about having to be there til 10pm if the debating kept up and started protesting the debating. A girl tried to bring up the NDAA and got boo'd and a guy next to me turned around to the people behind us and asked if they even realized what they were booing about. They said "what are you blabbering about?" and started getting belligerent towards us. At this point the chairman said no more debating and asked for a visual vote on the platform. Without counting he decided that the people wanting to end the debate were in the majority and like that no more debate on the platform. Suddenly people were voting to pass the platform and the chairman decided it passed. People really started freaking out then and were lined up to speak and was silenced by the chairman. Then a Romney guy motions for adjournment of the entire meeting and all of the Romney people were shouting in agreement. It was at this point I (and most of the rest of my district) decided to walk out. We were clearly outnumbered and it was obvious they weren't going to let us compromise on the platform at all and were pulling shenanigans to stop us from having a say in anything further.
Anyhow, that's my account of the day, and its pretty obvious the GOP plays dirty here. TBH I think we did pretty well and it pisses me off that if only 350 more of our people had showed up we could have won that entire slate.
We were told we should be there at 6:30 am for credentialing to avoid not being let in because the cutoff time was 9am. We arrived at 6:30 and it was a breeze because almost no one was there. My letter hadn't specified if I was a delegate or alternate so I wasn't sure but it turned out that I was a delegate! WooT!
The convention hall before it was filled
After credentialing we socialized for a bit until the meeting was supposed to come to order at 9am. Turns out, the rules are that no matter when a delegate shows up they will be let in, but also that the meeting couldn't even start until anyone who was in line before 9am was through the line. This turned into a giant mess considering a LOT of people were still in line at 9am
So back outside we went to hang out for a bit. This guy was awesome, he asked us to hold his sign while he got checked in so I said okay and one lady handing out Romney stickers said "jump on the bandwagon girls" and another Romney guy told me I was shameful. Lulz
The meeting Finally came to order 2 hours late and got started with speakers including our Governor Billy Long (nice face right?)
and some other people running for state offices. They all had some decent things to say but a standing senator (Todd Akins) actually said "Ron Paul was right when he said we should audit the Fed) which was cool because he was the ONLY one to even mention RP all day. After the speakers we elected a chairman, between David Cole (who's a lying asshole) and Brent Stafford (the St Charles guy who was arrested at their caucus) and of course David won (1,144 to 707).
The credentialing report said we had 1,194 delegates in attendance and there were originally 2,123 on the list to take convention so a lot apparently didn't show up.
The two options for secretary were a woman named Pat and a known RP supporter Amanda Kershaw, and the chairman moved to call with a majority not to do a second vote claiming that Pat won 2/3rds by visual confirmation. I wasn't confident that was the case but the chairman wasn't hearing anything and at this point it became pretty obvious what the guy was about.
At that point there was a giant cluster f**k because they were trying to figure out credentialing for the alternates to fill the seats that were for delegates who didn't show. For at LEAST an hour everyone was milling about trying to figure out what was happening while the chairman repeatedly said "about 5 more minutes we'll get started" After a while it was lunchtime and people started to get frustrated because stuff got started late anyway and now the GOP seemed to have their heads up their asses so someone called a motion to go to lunch, which had the Romney crowd up in arms because they were afraid their people wouldn't come back after lunch to vote on slates, so they protested, which required an amendment to offer a 90 min compromise on lunch (instead of the original stated 2 hours) which started another amendment and by the time we were voting people had no clue what was being voted on. The chairman thought he was funny and started joking about voting on the amendment to the amendment to the resolution of the amendment. :
: Considering the discussion of lunch took almost 40 minutes the GOP announced they had finished credentialing so the motion to convene was struck and it was decided (by the Romney people) to go ahead and vote on the slates.They had reduced it to two slates. The "Show me Unity" slate comprised of 16 Romney pledges and 9 santorum pledges, and the "Life and Liberty" Which was RP and a few Santorum pledges. There was a standing vote with the unity slate receiving 1,025 votes and the Life and Liberty slate receiving 781 votes. After the slate was decided we convened for lunch and it was announced that after lunch we would be voting on the Missouri GOP platform. They believed that most of us wouldn't show back up to vote on this. (turned out to be true, I believe only about 2/3rds of us showed back up)
When we came back the Romney people were vying to vote to accept the platform as it stood (even though there were 9 amendments turned into the chairman) and our people were debating against certain provisions in the platform (mainly under the security sections). A Romney guy who said he fought in Korea got up and said everyone should support the Patriot Act in it's entirety and if we didn't have anything to hide we shouldn't have a problem with it. A vet from Iraq took the mic and got boo'd. The Romney people behind us were bitching about having to be there til 10pm if the debating kept up and started protesting the debating. A girl tried to bring up the NDAA and got boo'd and a guy next to me turned around to the people behind us and asked if they even realized what they were booing about. They said "what are you blabbering about?" and started getting belligerent towards us. At this point the chairman said no more debating and asked for a visual vote on the platform. Without counting he decided that the people wanting to end the debate were in the majority and like that no more debate on the platform. Suddenly people were voting to pass the platform and the chairman decided it passed. People really started freaking out then and were lined up to speak and was silenced by the chairman. Then a Romney guy motions for adjournment of the entire meeting and all of the Romney people were shouting in agreement. It was at this point I (and most of the rest of my district) decided to walk out. We were clearly outnumbered and it was obvious they weren't going to let us compromise on the platform at all and were pulling shenanigans to stop us from having a say in anything further.
Anyhow, that's my account of the day, and its pretty obvious the GOP plays dirty here. TBH I think we did pretty well and it pisses me off that if only 350 more of our people had showed up we could have won that entire slate.
