We wouldn't have had a majority had all of the Ron Paul delegates shown up. We did very well in the five most populous counties in MO and we did okay elsewhere, but we were not expecting to have a majority. We were 34 delegates away from 1/3 of the delegates present, thus we were unable to stop any vote that required a 2/3 majority vote. Since we did not have that 1/3 we pretty much got spanked and couldn't get much accomplished.
The total number of delegates alloted was ~2,000 of which ~600 were Ron Paul supporters. We were very close to 1/3 of the delegates overall, but we were a little short.
The beginning was pretty comical. They sectioned off all of the challenged delegates (around 300 out of the 600 Ron Paul delegates) and had BIKERS WITH BIG BEARDS, PATCHES, THE WORKS TO STAND BY THE CHALLENGED DELEGATES TO INTIMIDATE US!! lol. My friend and I were just laughing at the absurdity of it all, let alone how Bubba and Spanky from Backwoods, Branson didn't look like they were all that tough anyways.
More absurd than that, when the Credentials Committee read their report, THEY PRETENDED THAT THE CHALLENGES BROUGHT AGAINST THE ST. CHARLES COUNTY DELEGATES ON THE BASIS THAT THE CAUCUS WAS CONDUCTED IMPROPERLY NEVER EXISTED!! When they cleared all challenged delegates except save about 15, we had to have someone go up to the chair and ask if St. Charles was allowed to participate; we were. Therefore, they knew that their challenges were absolute bull, so much so that they didn't even want to mention that we were indeed challenged at the State Convention!
That just makes Rich Magee and the establishment MO GOP look like absolutely corrupt crooks in their conduct of the Congressional District 2 Convention in which all St. Charles Delegates were not allowed to participate for the reason stated above. (Audio of Convention
here) We held a rump caucus since they weren't even following their own rules and it only shows to me that we were correct in doing this.
Of course, having two seperate Conventions in CD2 this meant that the matter was to be decided at the State Convention. Again, the establisment GOP pretended there was only one Convention and no rump, making no mention of the conflict. We had to bring that up to them, at which time they put it to the floor for a vote. The corrupt Convention was validated by the floor.
Although we were largely ineffective in being able to do anything at the State Convention, we would have done much worse had Dr. Paul not decided to hold a rally the previous night. I, and many other St. Charles County delegates (135 total) would not have bothered driving four hours to go to a Convention in which we would not be allowed to participate. The rally WAS AMAZING! Dr. Paul turned out ~1,800 people!!!! I know of many other delegates that had told me they weren't going until it was confirmed Dr. Paul was going to be there.
The person that filed the challenges against the St. Charles County Caucus (can't remember his name ATM) was also on the Committee that rules on whether or not a challenge is upheld, had a four-page hit-piece on Ron Paul supporters on the front page of their Republican newspaper which was circulated to all delegates at the un-official Convention business on Friday morning. Yours truly, was included in the article for my post here on Ron Paul forums. lol Apparently, helping others with strategy on how to win a caucus in a hostile environment is considered "deceiteful" according to the hit piece. I'll post that when I get someone to scan the article.
All in all, it was an interesting experience. Some seeds have been planted in my head, which is good, although at the present moment I feel like I wasted a perfectly good Saturday in a resort town with a lake and a lot of pretty ladies running around.
I learned that the Convention seems to be nothing more than a lot of verbal masturbation, speakers were even pandering to the Ron Paul supporters paying much lip service to the Constituion; solidfiying the "Us vs. them" mentality between Republicans and Democrats, it's so ridiculous, in fact, at one point high oil prices were blamed on Democrats! It seems no one wanted to probe the possibility that maybe, just maybe, their own failed policies could be to blame for some of the ills our nation - but no, just blame the Dems and pat yourself on the back. Good job. Go back to sleep.
If the leadership or most of the delegates want to know why our country is falling to pieces, if they even realize it is, the first step is to look in the mirror and take a long hard critical look at themselves. To me, the Convention would've been much more enjoyable and productive if we had SERIOUS internal debates and constructive criticisms on many of the questionable policies many Republicans currently support.
To give you an idea of the childish mentality of many of the participants in the delegation, when one of our delegates from my CD stood and said that he had been trying for 30 minutes to be recognized by the chair, this drew "Awwwwwwww" from the crowd. That happened several other times at which point I shouted, "GROW UP!!!"
Seriously, but the Democrats and Al-Qeada are ruining the country
