There's tons of confusion about this obviously and also some misinformation going around. Allow me to attempt to clarify. For those that don't know me, I'm one of "those" Tarrant County people, and currently chair of the Tarrant County Republican Party Bylaws Committee. I was also the 2008 Ron Paul Rally for the Republic Texas State Coordinator. I have been tracking these rule changes since we knew they were coming and was at the SREC meeting where they were voted on.
There are serious problems with these rules, but in general where they are bad they are bad because the SREC overstepped their authority and changed things that didn't necessarily need to change to account for redistricting. They should have maintained the requirement for precinct conventions statewide and just made allowances for adjusting the date as needed. They also should not have changed the binding rules for national--while I don't have a problem with that change, the right place to do it was through the state convention, not by taking advantage of an emergency.
The rules themselves do not create any particular problem favoring any faction over any other, Ron Paul people or otherwise. You do need to find out if your county is going to have precinct conventions or not, and if they aren't, figure out if you want to try to change that. Each county EC can vote on that, so if your county chair tells you "no", you don't have to take that answer. Try to change their mind or if you are a precinct chair and your county allows a meeting to be called by a certain number of chairs, consider that option.
Those of you complaining that "now it will all be decided by a committee" are probably from one of the parts of the state that has tradition of doing things differently, particularly Dallas. Every county and SD convention has a nominating committee that makes recommendations to the floor on who should go to state. That is nothing new. There is also an option in state party rules (that has been there for years) to CAUCUS as precincts at the county or SD convention and elect part of the state delegation from those caucuses directly. That is not a precinct convention, it's a caucus of the SD or county convention, and there's no reason you still can't do that. Dallas has a tradition of going a step farther and actually voting on state delegates in their precinct conventions themselves, but there is no provision in the rules for this and what you're actually doing is sending a recommendation to the SD nominations committee that they can chose to accept or reject, but historically they accept. Yes, not having precinct conventions means you can't do it this way, but you can still do it from precinct caucuses of the SD conventions as the rules actually allow. Regardless, bring the majority to the convention and if you don't like the nominating committee report, vote to amend it. It's up to the majority on the floor.
I will also note that as far as precinct chairs, you cannot just be appointed by an individual to that position. You have to be elected. Several counties have a process where they'll appoint a volunteer to fill a vacant precinct position, but unless a majority of the EC votes to put you in the vacancy, you're not a voting member of the EC. In any case, you have to be elected every two years, so even if you got appointed or elected by an EC to a vacancy, you still need to get on the ballot for the 2012 election. Last, the filing deadline for precinct chairs ONLY is actually June 1st since that vote will be held along with the runoff election.
Hopefully this helps. I'll try to keep an eye out for further questions.
