MO State Convention was crazy

[Dogsoldier]

I have not had so many people look me in the eye and lie to me in my life that did at the convention.I was not welcome,they did not want me there,they didn't care what I had to say.I was as polite as I could be.I will probably never be back to a Republican convention after that...Vote for these people and Romney?NO WAY!!!...Unless we have a Ron Paul reincarnated.

These Romney supporters that I was seated by seemed like nice people at the first caucus "christian" type.Man there was nothing "christian"
about them.


Hind sights 20/20 I could have done so much more but it was my first time and I didn't know any better.

 

[CJPrinter]

The meeting Finally came to order 2 hours late...

Actually the meeting was called to order about an hour late, but with the confusion over seating delegates, i can understand why it felt like two. The delegates weren't finished being seated until after noon. With the election of the cabinet and the rhetoric of the candidates. By the time they were done it was close to 1:00. The agenda had lunch scheduled from 12-2 and it was a $35 paid event, so someone (I'm assuming a RP delegate) made a motion to break for the scheduled "overpriced lunch." This was taken as a tactic by the majority of the Romney delegates for us to win our slate through attrition. In reality we were all just hungry! LOL By the time the motion was finally shut down & the slates were voted on it was after 2! Now for those of us like the me, that got there at 6:30 and didn't bring food because we expected to get the SCHEDULED lunch, we were passed hungry, many of us were physically ill!

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).

I can't offer enough praise for David Cole! Call him whatever names you want, he was the most patient, even tempered and fair chair I experienced throughout my Greene County/CD7/State path! Not once did his opinion effect the convention. He let us talk for the allotted time. (Many considerably longer) He accepted it when he was wrong. And he followed Roberts Rules to a T! There was even doubt among us that Brent Stafford could have done so well. HONESTLY, had I known how well David Cole would do, I would have voted for him!

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).

If the Romney people wanted to accept the platform as it stood they would have done it. They had the clear majority but it was NOT accepted as it stood, thus allowing the amendments to be read.

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.

THIS is why the establishment fights us so hard! YOU missed a HUGE opportunity here! We had similar experiences in CD7, BUT every chance I got I spun it into a positive by trying to understand WHY THEY FEEL THE WAY THEY DO. It CAN NOT be us vs. them! Whey you make it clear to them you are NOT A THREAT, they open up. By the end of the day a two of us had at least 5 of the most outspoken establishment from our county completely understanding our point of view and vice versa. We all shook hands at the end of the day and left as friends, because we realized how much we really have in common!

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.

Had you stuck around you would have seen that nearly all of our amendments got passed and the unification of the party that came from it. This should have been the FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS. If it had, I can guarantee you we would have had at least a showing on the elected slate.

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.

The only dirty tricks attempted yesterday came from the RP camp. For the record, had the plan that was made during lunch by the RP leadership been played out, we would have completely lost our credibility.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate your perspective, but I believe it is what's wrong with our RP supporters. Most of us are so caught up in what we believe, we won't take the time to understand WHY the "establishment" sees us as a threat. They see our passion as agression and react accordingly! All it would have taken this year was channeling that passion into TRUE communication and we could have won this election by a landslide.

 

[CJPrinter]

I have not had so many people look me in the eye and lie to me in my life that did at the convention.I was not welcome,they did not want me there,they didn't care what I had to say.I was as polite as I could be.I will probably never be back to a Republican convention after that...Vote for these people and Romney?NO WAY!!!...Unless we have a Ron Paul reincarnated.

These Romney supporters that I was seated by seemed like nice people at the first caucus "christian" type.Man there was nothing "christian"
about them.


Hind sights 20/20 I could have done so much more but it was my first time and I didn't know any better.

Did you once ask them why they were making you feel unwelcome? Did you validate their concerns or discredit them and escalate the friction? Did you approach them from the perspective of really wanting to understand their concerns, or shut them out?

They see us as a threat because they don't understand us. We see them as a threat because we don't understand them. All it takes is communication and that perspective vanishes.

We had similar experiences in CD7, BUT every chance I got I spun it into a positive by trying to understand WHY THEY FEEL THE WAY THEY DO. It CAN NOT be us vs. them! Whey you make it clear to them you are NOT A THREAT, they open up. By the end of the day a two of us had at least 5 of the most outspoken establishment from our county completely understanding our point of view and vice versa. We all shook hands at the end of the day and left as friends, because we realized how much we really have in common!

 

[Dogsoldier]

"It CAN NOT be us vs. them!"

But it was us vs them?Romney got pretty much ALL the delegates!

Friends is friends not delegate votes.

Sure I talked to them but all they had was smart remarks and eye rolls.I swear I was polite.I didn't say or do anything offensive.They DID NOT CARE what I had to say "Ron Paul" people were the devil...And I know others will attest to this EVERYTHING that happened was Paul supporters fault and I mean EVERYTHING.If you offered them clear proof and facts they would give you the eye roll and refuse to listen.

What frustrated me was that we agreed on every subject except foreign policy.They would say they liked 99% of what Ron Paul stood for but they wouldn't vote for him.Even though they only agreed with Romney probably 75%.When you pointed that out to them thats when you got the eye roll.

CJ are you saying we should support Romney now?

 

[trey4sports]

They should feel threatened because as my tag-line says... Mitt Must Lose - If they have the notion that we aren't team players and are not going to "fall in line" then they are correct. I will not, for even one minute, contemplate voting for Willard.

If they don't put up a solid candidate in the general election I will do everything in my power to tear down the GOP. If for no other reason than spite.

 

[Eleutheros]

I just wanted to say that I logged on just to give two people positive rep for succinctly making sense out of what sounded like a crazy convention and for putting everything in perspective. AFAIC, the Romney camp won fair and square and David Cole did as great a job as GOP chairman (and a non-Paul supporter) as what could possibly be expected.

Kudos to everyone who attended. Better luck to us in MO in 2016.

 

[Ivash]

People don't seem to get that the Romney people read all these posts and are well aware of the "tactics" and that the RP delegates main goal is taking over "their" party. I don't think it's surprising that it's met with resistance and out and out illegality...and after yesterday blatant violence. Most of the Romney people think RP supporters are all dope smoking hippies. (seriously I saw that on the Romney chat). They are incredibly clueless about the ideology of liberty or why it should be important to everyone. If it's not on Fox News...it doesn't mean sh*t. Or that's the impression I get anyway.

Romney's 'people' have better things to do with their lives than read posts on an internet chat board. It's not exactly secret information that Dr. Paul's supporters are trying to claim delegates at conventions- McCain had to spend half a million dollars on primary conventions for similar reasons last time around.

 

[Carlybee]

Romney's 'people' have better things to do with their lives than read posts on an internet chat board. It's not exactly secret information that Dr. Paul's supporters are trying to claim delegates at conventions- McCain had to spend half a million dollars on primary conventions for similar reasons last time around.

Really? Better things to do? Like bake sales and flag waving?LOL. That must be why they post scurrilous comments on op eds...because they have better things to do. You sound like a Romney cheerleader.

 

[damiengwa]

Did you once ask them why they were making you feel unwelcome? Did you validate their concerns or discredit them and escalate the friction? Did you approach them from the perspective of really wanting to understand their concerns, or shut them out?

They see us as a threat because they don't understand us. We see them as a threat because we don't understand them. All it takes is communication and that perspective vanishes.

What naivety! They see you as a threat because you ARE one. Seriously. A lot of Paulites need to dispel with the fictions they were taught in public school. These conventions are not about gaining understanding. They have been hijacked and rigged. The outcomes are known, and the party drones go in there and vote on stuff w/o even reading it. They don't have to, they know whats good for them and they don't care about the public, or having a debate.

THEY, care about their power. Their ability to hook people and themselves up with loot. Its a smash and grab masquerading as a town hall meeting. PLEASE, THIS IS YOUR WAKEUP CALL! The system is rotten thru and thru! Its time to progress past this charade.

 

[trey4sports]

What naivety! They see you as a threat because you ARE one. Seriously. A lot of Paulites need to dispel with the fictions they were taught in public school. These conventions are not about gaining understanding. They have been hijacked and rigged. The outcomes are known, and the party drones go in there and vote on stuff w/o even reading it. They don't have to, they know whats good for them and they don't care about the public, or having a debate.

THEY, care about their power. Their ability to hook people and themselves up with loot. Its a smash and grab masquerading as a town hall meeting. PLEASE, THIS IS YOUR WAKEUP CALL! The system it rotten thru and thru!

word!

This was not a coombaya session where we all held hands talked about how each other felt.....

they KNEW what was up..... we were gunnning to take over their party, and they did NOT want to relinquish power. We were just a BIT short, but there is no doubt in my mind that all hell will break lose in 4 years because this is a war of attrition and their numbers are slowly dwindling.

 

[slamhead]

Thanks for the hard work. Very disappointing though. I thought we owned a majority of the delegates going in.

 

[CaptainAmerica]

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.

Im sure in the GOP rules for MO there was a rule about roll call. If the chairman did not do a proper roll call to count the credentialed delegates remaining then he had no way to officially call "No quorum". What happened to all the MO ron paul voters ,I thought they were in abundance to outnumber the romney voters?

 

[Dogsoldier]

As I understand it they cheated us out of a county.Jefferson maybe?If we would have gotten that county we would have won but they pulled some shady stuff as I understand it.

 

[Carson]

Thanks for the report Delegate roxic27 ,

As I read the closing of your story it came to me that at certain times a holding up of the Bic Lighter could be a sign of protest as well an awesome moment in a concert.

 

[Carson]

I have not had so many people look me in the eye and lie to me in my life that did at the convention.I was not welcome,they did not want me there,they didn't care what I had to say.I was as polite as I could be.I will probably never be back to a Republican convention after that...Vote for these people and Romney?NO WAY!!!...Unless we have a Ron Paul reincarnated.

These Romney supporters that I was seated by seemed like nice people at the first caucus "christian" type.Man there was nothing "christian"
about them.


Hind sights 20/20 I could have done so much more but it was my first time and I didn't know any better.

I had to really push myself to register again republican. Only for Ron Paul.

I can't wait to wash the stigma off.

Then again people are really coming together and restoring the party. I'll just have to stay strong and watch...and wait...

 

[CJPrinter]

"It CAN NOT be us vs. them!"

But it was us vs them?Romney got pretty much ALL the delegates!

Friends is friends not delegate votes.

SORT OF...

They are putting up a defense to our offensive because we are charging in screaming we're going to take them out. If we understood their perspective and they ours, then we all could be, for lack of a better word, friends. We were all SHOCKED to discover how much we had in common in our political beliefs. We all left wanting to continue the discussion. If this had been the case for all of us, since the liberty movement started, I can't help but believe it would have translated to delegate votes.

I pushed HARD after the CD Conventions to get this type of defense enacted as our interim strategy. Unfortunately our coordinators didn't believe it would be effective or happen quick enough to make a real difference. I can bitch about it till I'm blue in the face, but it won't change anything now. We lost because we didn't even try. I know for 100% fact it worked for me and DonovanJames yesterday. The hard-core establishment we talked to agreed RP should get a speaking slot at Tampa, based on our conversations with them...

Sure I talked to them but all they had was smart remarks and eye rolls.I swear I was polite.I didn't say or do anything offensive.They DID NOT CARE what I had to say "Ron Paul" people were the devil...And I know others will attest to this EVERYTHING that happened was Paul supporters fault and I mean EVERYTHING.If you offered them clear proof and facts they would give you the eye roll and refuse to listen.

What frustrated me was that we agreed on every subject except foreign policy.They would say they liked 99% of what Ron Paul stood for but they wouldn't vote for him.Even though they only agreed with Romney probably 75%.When you pointed that out to them thats when you got the eye roll.

Fair enough. You win some, you loose some. I had a fantastic experience with my discussions, sorry you couldn't.

CJ are you saying we should support Romney now?

No, but I do have a deeper understanding as to why they will and it's not what so many on this board think...

 

[lib3rtarian]

Er, did we win any delegates?

 

[CJPrinter]

What naivety! They see you as a threat because you ARE one. Seriously. A lot of Paulites need to dispel with the fictions they were taught in public school. These conventions are not about gaining understanding. They have been hijacked and rigged. The outcomes are known, and the party drones go in there and vote on stuff w/o even reading it. They don't have to, they know whats good for them and they don't care about the public, or having a debate.

THEY, care about their power. Their ability to hook people and themselves up with loot. Its a smash and grab masquerading as a town hall meeting. PLEASE, THIS IS YOUR WAKEUP CALL! The system is rotten thru and thru! Its time to progress past this charade.

My political views have NOTHING to do with what I was taught in public school. In fact I HATED history and politics all through school and for many years thereafter. It took around 20 years of my own personal in-depth research to reach where I am today and I will be the first to admit I have a LONG way to go.

That said, anyone that watched David Cole run yesterdays convention, and paid attention, would agree, he was a class act. NONE of what you list here happened...

 

[CJPrinter]

word!

This was not a coombaya session where we all held hands talked about how each other felt.....

they KNEW what was up..... we were gunnning to take over their party, and they did NOT want to relinquish power. We were just a BIT short, but there is no doubt in my mind that all hell will break lose in 4 years because this is a war of attrition and their numbers are slowly dwindling.

You guys NEED to understand, they would GLADLY relinquish their power, IF they understood they weren't giving it to unexperienced radicals!

 

[NoOneButPaul]

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.

Gotta wonder if you would have been put over the top if Benton wasn't such an idiot...