Today marked my second time caucusing for Ron Paul, I of course caucused and delegated for Ron back in 2008. My precinct is in an upper middle class section of Las Vegas, Summerlin to be exact, so the demographics mostly consist of older if not retired, white and a substantial L.D.S population. Out of my precinct about 19 people showed up, me and another gentlemen decided to be captain and co-captain to run our precinct caucus. We introduced ourselves, passed out the information and explained the caucus and convention process...etc.
The next step was to figure out who was volunteering to attend the county convention next month, for my precinct we needed seven. Luckily it was very easy to get the 7 volunteers. The "fun" part was next, where people would volunteer to speak about their candidate. The first candidate on the list was Newt (we went in alphabetical order), not one person shared their views on Newt, so we next went to Ron Paul. Myself and two other gentlemen shared our views on Ron Paul some of the issues consisted of:
- tort reform to control health care prices
- the debt, deficits and the Fed
- national security
- abortion
I of course spoke about he's the only veteran in the race, how RP never voted to increase taxes, an unbalanced budget, delivered babies.....etc.
After speaking about Ron Paul, it was Mitt's turn. All I heard was how Mitt saved the SLC Winter Olympics, he's able to work with Democrats as the governor of MA, his business background....etc. Then the FoxNews brain washing started to kick in. "Ron Paul wants to legalize drugs," "Ron Paul wants Iran to own a nuclear weapon," "Ron Paul is too extreme, he never got anything accomplished in Congress....."...etc.
So of course us Ron Paul supports defended Ron by making it clear Ron Paul has a consistent voting record going back 30 years, he believes certain things like drugs should be a state issue, and the biggest surprise is when I told Romney-ites that Ron Paul is the only candidate that gets twice the amount of donations from active service members than any other candidate combined! I also made it a point that Ron Paul is the only candidate that will get the votes of independents and Democrats if he was to be the nominee (I made sure to bring up "Reagan Democrats).
Afterwards, we did the vote: 12 Romney, 6 Ron Paul, 1 Gingrich, 0 Santorum and 4 of the 7 delegates that are going to represent my precinct at the Clark County Convention next month are Ron Paul supporters. I even made sure the votes were tallied correctly, personally sealed the ballot envelop and made sure it was dropped off where it was suppose to be. So even though Ron Paul didn't win the straw poll we accomplished in giving him a solid delegation to represent him next month, and as we know that's all that matters!