County Conventions today in Iowa

Hi everyone, today (Saturday March 8) the Iowa GOP held its county conventions across the state. The main orders of business were electing delegates to the district/state convention and voting on a county platform. Since my county lacked a good or experienced chair (me, sorry guys) I only came in with 2 Ron Paul delegates. Lacking the votes to significantly change the platform I planned to be "Mr. No" and like the good doctor, argue and vote against every unconstitutional plank in the hopes that my speaking would earn me enough respect to get voted on to state convention.

The good news - delegates were elected first. The county establishment prepared a list of the first 11 of 18 delegates for us to rubber stamp and took volunteers for the other 7. Both me and a RP supporting friend volunteered and made the list. I was able to slip another young r3volutionairy who was away at college in as an alternate.

The bad news - the rules on platform were confusing, and I was lead to believe that each plank could be discussed and voted on. Instead we were presented the platform and allowed only to accept or reject the whole thing, which was about 1/3 pretty good, 1/3 bad, and 1/3 vomit-inducing. Even though the rules of convention stated that the rules couldn't be changed, I moved to throw out that rule and vote up or down on each plank. The chair said we couldn't do that but we could vote to throw out the whole platform and start over (basically a different way to accomplish my goal). He then tried to vote down my motion by voice vote and approve the platform as it was. The "ayes" (approve) yelled louder than us but we forced a vote by hands and lost that 27-18. Then someone pointed out that the rules defined a majority as one more than 50%, in this case 28 votes of 54. After that the discussion devolved into a debate on the merits of a plank regarding the bottle deposit bill. Then they revoted to accept the platform as written. I tried to lead the charge again to keep discussion open but everyone else was apparently too lazy or too apathetic to keep debating so this time the platform passed by a wide majority with the 2 RP supporters and 6 others voting "no."

Aftermath - They say that 50% of life is just showing up and I think its that way at this type of convention. The party elders thanked me for coming and enlivening the party. Since I didn't get much chance to push any Ron Paul platform stuff, their positive reception of me had more to do with my backstory (young guy who returned to the rural county to start a business and new warm body in a dying party) than any beliefs. Though afterword I went to ask the county auditor about whether our county is switching to Diebold touch screens with no paper trail (we're not) and she asked who got me involved with the GOP. I answered "I'm probably not supposed to say this, but Dr. Ron Paul. I'm a Taft-Goldwater conservative and I thought the party only accepted Lyndon Johnson conservatives, but since Dr. Paul bought us a seat at the table I took it." Surprisingly they were pretty positive even upon hearing the name of He Who Must Not Be Named. They encouraged me to stay involved and help in the elections this fall, and I answered, "well, I'll have to see who's running, I've learned the last 8 years that just because they have an R behind their name doesn't mean they're any good." These hardened partisans even nodded their agreement, so maybe somewhere deep in their Republican hearts there still lies a little spark of liberty.

Sorry to write so much, bottom line - 2 RP delegates and 1 alternate advance to state. If there's any more Iowans on today, how did you guys do?