Washington State Convention - Day 2 - Now With Pictures!

It took me 24 hours to sort out everything that happened yesterday but I think I got it.

Yesterday the sh*t hit the fan.

My husband and I started the day by going into the convention room, and this time there were a lot of empty chairs that had been filled to capacity yesterday. As the first order of business, we were supposed to elect the electors and the delegates at large. On everyone's chair was a red slip of paper entitled "Romney*Huckabee*McCain*Guiliani Unity Slate" with a list of delegates that either had McCain or Huckabee by their names. The first person to go up to the mic was a major coordinator for the Ron Paul campaign, I don't know if she would want me to publicize her name so let's call her "K." K went up to the mic and said that there was literature on the chairs that was about Ron Paul that the Ron Paul campaign did not put there and that she would like everyone to ignore it. Sure enough, it was a piece of paper explaining that everyone except Ron Paul, who was running for president, was a member of the CFR. I was a little surprised that she wanted to mention it but I understood where she was coming from. She just wanted to make the Ron Paul campaign look professional.

Then she spoke again about something that really shocked me. She asked that we all vote to pass through the unity slate that was on everybody's chairs. I didn't understand it. I felt betrayed and knew other supporters would have something to say about it too. So we all voted by standing and it actually passed. Kirby, the chairman then said, "I just want to say, I think we should all give the Ron Paul people a round of applause for coming together for us." All the McCain people stood up and applauded us. They turned to RP supporters next to them and personally thanked them. I was so confused.

At this point, it was time to get to work on the platform. A McCain person went up and said that the platform committee worked very hard on the platform and we should all just pass it through (as in, without any debate). Needless to say, he got a lot of boos. So there was a debate. Some people went up and said that they drove 5 hours to get there to vote on the platform, that is what we all came to do and that it what we should do. Other people said that it would take all day to make any changes and we wouldn't get to the resolutions (which are separate from the platform). One person said that in his county, they had 8 pages of platform and that the state platform is just supposed to be a general document. So they did a lot of boring voting and then came to the conclusion that we needed to go section by section and vote on whether or not to pass it through as is or debate it and vote on making changes. This is when the McCain campaign people started to pull their shit.

For example, we would be on section 1 which might be about family, and so someone would get up to the mic and say, "I would like to set this section aside because I'd like to speed things up." Saying "set this aside" in parliamentary procedure means that you would like to debate it. So he said, "I would like to set this section aside (debate this section) because I'd like to speed things up." If you vote yes - it means yes, I would like to debate this section and make changes. But if you vote no - that means we don't get to debate it and it gets passed as is. All of us were confused as hell. The chairman (who apparently was not in on their scheme) said, "look, I don't think you understand, if you say you want to set it aside it's not going to speed things up because we're going to be debating it for a long time." Well, this guy had one of those ear feed things in his ear and you could tell he couldn't listen to two people at once and so he got embarrassed and said into the mic, "I withdraw my statement." So then another McCain guy goes up there and he says the exact same thing: "I would like to set this section aside (meaning I would like to debate this) because I would like to speed things up." Again, Kirby says, "that doesn't make any sense, are you sure?" and he said smugly, "yes." He asks him again, the guy says, "yes." Everybody booed him because they wanted to debate the platform. That's what they came there for. Kirby looked like he thought it was pretty stupid but he was like, all right, let's have a vote. So all the McCain supporters were like, well, I don't want to just "speed things up" so they voted no. And all the McCain leaders held up signs that said "no" to help them figure out how they were supposed to vote. WE did not need signs to tell us how to vote. We voted our consciences. So all of the McCain people won by voting no. So here is the messed up part: they voted not to make changes to the platform and to just pass it as is. The McCain campaign exploited their own supporters' ignorance in order to win. And it wasn't the last time.

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So one really smart guy in the audience, much smarter than me, figured out pretty quick what was going on. He went up the mic and said, "Chairman! There is a conspiracy! They're making up stupid excuses to debate it because they know that if they say something stupid, people are going to vote against it and they are voting to not make changes to the platform! There's a guy in a red hat going up to your people and then talking to all the McCain people and telling them how to vote!" Unfortunately, the chairman didn't get it and he said, "What do you mean, 'your people.' We're all 'your people'." To which all of the McCain people cheered and a bunch of us started to get what the heck was going on.

So K goes up there, she's like, "I'd like to take a vote that everyone doesn't get to use their signs in order to tell them how to vote." Now, on one hand, if nobody got to use signs, as in, no RP signs, no McCain signs, no yes or no signs, then people would vote their conscience and vote for what was right. But then on the other hand, everyone should be free to speak as they choose and that includes signs. On principle (in the spirit of Dr. Paul) I voted for the latter, even though it wasn't going to help me win.

After a while, people started to understand, so they just tried to be the first to get to the mic and they would say, "I would like to set this section aside because I would like for it to have a sentence in it about 2nd amendment rights." So then everybody got up and even though the signs said to vote no, they voted yes because everyone was yelling, "Come on! 2nd amendment rights!" So a couple of the sections were open to debate and changes because of some very smart people.

So then we passed changes to a couple of sections but nothing juicy.

Then we broke for lunch. If you were nice enough to read the first post, I mentioned that a guy named Larry wanted me help with his campaign for the house of representatives. I came to the conclusion that I was going to help him because the party wanted to include us. So I spoke to his campaign manager and explained the thing about the meetup groups and getting together for a Q&A session. It might have been just me, but she seemed a little reluctant. I don't know if that was because she didn't want Larry to become associated with Ron Paul people or what. She said that she had a similar idea but that she wanted the questions submitted beforehand. I told her I didn't know how the meetups would respond and so I would have to get back to her after I contacted them.

I went to the Ron Paul RV and just in time because K (who had one of those ear things too) got up on this bale of hay (I know, right?) and said, "EVERYBODY LISTEN! We just talked to the McCain campaign. They said that they will stop using their signs if we stop using our signs and stop bashing McCain." Well as you would guess, not many of us were happy about that. People yelled out, "let 'em keep their signs" and "Ron Paul doesn't compromise!" But K reassured us to keep our eye on the prize and told us that revolutions don't happen overnight. So she convinced us and we went back to the convention room. Some kids were walking around with a sign that had McCain written on it and the C was a sickle and hammer. Somebody went up to them and told them to put it away. Later I heard that some RP supporters went up to some McCain people and started making a "baa" sound at them. I think this is hilarious but I could totally see where K was coming from in that it makes us look bad to act like this in public. Therefore, we should each make the choice to ourselves to keep those things private.

It was unspoken but all of the signs were gone. I have no idea how everyone got word of this in such a short amount of time, but they did.

So we're in there and there is this packet of resolutions -- my God, there must have been about 30 in there. And they all had a curious "Y" marked on the upper right hand corner. Then there was a packet of resolutions twice as big that had a bunch of "N" markings on the upper right hand corner. I asked around what the difference was, but nobody knew. I looked through the Y packet and half of them I would have voted no on. Things like, the resolutions against assisted suicide, resolutions to instruct representatives to keep Guantanamo and deny habeus corpus to "terrorists." I looked at the "N" packet and noticed that a curious amount of resolutions sounded pretty Ron Paul influenced. Such things as: repealing the 16th amendment so we don't have to pay income tax, abolishing the federal reserve and supporting only formal declarations of war passed by the house. Very suspicious. So once the floor was open somebody asked what the deal was. Apparently, the platform committee determined which resolutions were special enough to be considered (the yes packet) and which ones they deemed not good enough for the convention to consider. So somebody asked, well, what constitutes a resolution good enough to be in the Y packet? And someone on the platform committee said that the committee had worked really hard to put it together and that we should all vote to just pass it through without any discussion (totally pulling a Hillary Clinton). They voted and decided to just pass it through without any debate. (I will explain why I think they did this, later)

Then an awesome former senator for our state went up the mic and gave a fiery speech about how there were some great resolutions in the N packet that he wanted to consider. Such important things as abolishing the federal reserve and in the income tax. He got wild applause. So he had won over the room and it was voted to consider each resolution in the N packet.

This is when the JUICIEST part happened which I'm sure you already heard about but let's rehash it because it's so much fun.

So all of a sudden, there's a huge exodus out the convention doors and they just so happen to be holding McCain signs. I turn to some McCain folk in front of me, I go, "what the heck is going on here?" I played dumb like, "don't they all want to pass resolutions?" He goes, "they're trying to prevent all you Ron Paul people from passing resolutions so they're leaving to prevent a quorum and end the convention." We were worried it was going to be Nevada all over again. But I had high hopes because the guy and all his pals in front of me said, "we ain't going anywhere." Then a John McCain guy with the ear thing again, comes up to them and he's looking at us for Ron Paul buttons and he says to the man, "your wife wants to see you in the hallway." And the man says, "Well she's going to be waiting a long time. I'm staying right here." So then the guy whispers not very quietly, "they're moving into the hallway to prevent a quorum." All of these brave McCain supporters stood their ground and they said, "I don't care. I'm staying right here." We were so impressed. We expressed to them how great they were for taking the moral high ground. A lot of McCain people stayed. They were clearly disturbed by this action. You could see they had doubt in their eyes. I wished I could have gone inside their brains for a couple of minutes. If the Ron Paul campaign had done that at the convention, I would have had a hard time with that. Eventually, the guys in front of me left after being asked repeatedly to leave. But many of them stayed. This leads me to believe that this is proof that if Ron Paul had had more media exposure he would have won. Hands down. So many of them had strong principles, just like Ron Paul. They're going to be the ones voting for Ron Paul republicans in the coming years. I'm sure of it.

All right, so at this point, you know some asshole was going go up to the mic and dumbfoundly say, "chairman, I noticed a large number of people leaving the room." The chairman, obviously irritated, says, "I noticed that too." The guy goes, "I think we should check to see if we still have a quorum." So the chairman's like, "ok, let's do this."

There's a bunch of commotion for God knows what reason. We had a projection screen up showing the whole thing and just then they cut to a screen that had the cover of our convention booklet on it that was a bunch of elephants marching and the words, "Party On The March" which everyone laughed at.

http://s293.photobucket.com/albums/mm72/WSRCluvr/?action=vie...

So while they're shuffling about, a beautiful thing happens. It quiets down and someone starts singing, "God Bless America" and everybody joins in, including the parliamentarians. Somebody told me that Lew Moore's wife Maureen came up with that idea. If that's true I want to thank her because I LOVED it! If not, then thanks to whoever did come up with it. So we finish that song and we sing the national anthem which was equally as beautiful. It was just so good on so many levels. And it's too good for me to ruin by giving a point by point analysis.

Then a miracle happened. We had a quorum! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY! YAY! We needed 667 and we had 742 (or at least something close to that). We were SO happy and you should have seen the look on the McCain campaign volunteer's faces! Someone quickly ran up to the mic and said they wanted to have a vote on a resolution that would say that the republican party should only support a war that is a formal declaration of war passed by the house of representatives. We hurriedly voted and IT PASSED! YAAAAY! And the chairman said, "Well, that's as close to unanimous as I've ever seen." I actually didn't see anybody vote against it. K had tried earlier to pass a motion to suspend the rules and extend the convention until all business has been completed but it was right in the middle of the war resolution so she had to wait. But then she quickly said it after it had passed and we were about to vote on it when some McCain people went up the mic and said that they wanted to know what the number was for the quorum by county. Everyone booed to the point where you couldn't even hear him. A first at this convention. Then that was voted down. Meanwhile, all the McCain people are running back in and trying to get credentialed as fast as possible. Then the McCain people said they wanted a roll call (count everyone instead of the chairman seeing there was 2/3 majority and voicing it). Then the chair said that a head count is not appropriate because it's clear who won. The McCain guy said that he just wanted an honest convention and that it was unclear if there was a majority. Then they called into question the judgment of the chair in his decision that it was not necessary to list the number of people by county. So then they had a vote and there wasn't a 2/3 majority to sustain the chairman's ruling so they had to do a count and even then the decision of the chair was sustained. They were just trying to waste as much time as possible because we had to be out of there by 5PM and it was 4:45PM. Then a bunch of people shouted out "point of order" because they wanted to waste more time and the chair said, "I'm going to ignore those point of orders because we have to address the original question as to whether or not we are going to extend the time we spend here passing resolutions until we are done. You can sue me." Everyone applauded him. Well, almost everyone.

Kirby tried to break the tension with a joke. You see, Kirby is a pretty heavy set guy and he held up a white Ron Paul T-shirt and he says, "I just want to know, who was the Ron Paul guy who gave me this T-shirt and thought I was a small?" It was probably the funniest thing that happened all day. I still can't stop cracking up about it. But it is probably one of those "you had to be there" things.

Ok, anyway, at this point, the McCain people had got most of their people back because it had taken an hour to do all of this crap. I heard one of the Paul people said to the McCain people, "you should be ashamed of yourselves." She said to him, "Well there are pros and cons of the parliamentary procedure." On one hand, we can agree with her because it can be used for you or against you, but when we used Robert's rules we used them ethically and they didn't.

Kirby made a proposal that we vote on two things because it was past 5 o'clock. He said either you vote yes and then we extend the time or you vote no and we have to adjourn immediately. So we took a vote and the nays had it -- we could not extend the time and we had to leave. It was so disappointing. We had the majority but not 2/3. Somebody told me that right outside they were going to have a meeting. I couldn't find it and then I heard a chant -- "Ron Paul revolution, legalize the constitution! Ron Paul revolution, legalize the constitution!" I followed it all the way right outside the doors of the convention. Everyone was holding up their signs and chanting. We started marching and we walked forever all the way around the convention center. A lot of cars honked at us as we marched. Some of them held their Ron Paul signs up in the air when they saw us. A lot of people were taking video and pictures. We finally got back to the Ron Paul RV and a couple of people gave speeches.

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They finally explained what the deal was with trying to push through the unity slate. K said that in the past they've never been able to even get to the resolutions and the party platform because it took so long to get through electing all of the delegates. She said that they had the majority of the room so it would make us look better to just give them their "unity" slate. She also told us to keep our eye on the prize. This thing is long term. She told us that the most important thing we need to do now is become PCOs. There is a deadline on June 6 and we need a PCO in every precinct. The PCOs are important because they are the ones who decide who in the party is in a position of power. She also stated that there was so much cheating going on that we DIDN'T see and that a formal complaint has been filed for each thing. Apparently, it is illegal for them to even push through a "unity" slate. Also, one of our national delegates was offered $5,000 plus all expenses paid to the national convention to vote John McCain! He said NO! And good for him. K explained that it's ok that we didn't win this time and that they cheated because in a couple of years, we're going to be the ones in their positions. Words cannot express what an empowering feeling it gave me.

I have one concern though that's still on my mind. Remember how I talked about that Larry guy who was running for the house of representatives and he wanted my help? After seeing the actions of the neocons, I'm not so confident that that is such a good idea. I'd really, REALLY like to know what you guys think about that. Part of me says that I should not be willing to compromise my principles by trying to get a weak republican elected to the house but another part of me wonders if this would be a good idea as a party insider. If anybody wants to put in their two cents, I'd really like to hear it because I'm supposed to contact this Larry guy in the next couple of days. Also, I thought I heard someone say that Dino Rossi walked out but I could barely hear them. Can anyone verify if this is true or if I very possibly misheard?

I am so glad I went to that convention. Every penny spent was worth it. I'm glad the McCain people pulled that garbage because it changed me. I went into that convention on the first day feeling too shy to even wear my Ron Paul button. I left that convention with a fire in my belly. I'm going to become a PCO and together we're going to take back that damn party and inject it with some integrity. Something it is completely lacking right now.

I don't understand how anybody who was there could be a McCain supporter anymore. The McCain campaign insulted their own supporters. They thought their supporters were so stupid that they had to have signs waved in their faces to tell them how to vote. They purposefully proposed motions in a way that would make it so that their supporters didn't understand what they were REALLY voting for. They told all of their supporters to leave the room, not because they wanted to prevent Ron Paul people from voting to pass resolutions, but to keep their own supporters from "accidentally" siding with the Ron Paul people. After all, we didn't have the majority to win and pass the resolutions we wanted on our own. The reason they told all their supporters to leave was to prevent THEM from voting for things that they actually believed in and McCain doesn't. For example, the resolution that you should only go to war with a declaration from congress, which, by the way, they unanimously did support!

So that was my account of the whole second day of the convention. I'm sorry that it is long. I hate long posts too but I figured that if there was anyone out there that did want a detailed account, I was going to write it anyway so I might as well post it. If you did make it this far, you will be getting your medal in the mail shortly.