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….at the Minnesota Republican State Convention in Rochester, MN.

Attended the pre-rally and the reception afterwards. Rally was pretty nice…as far as rallies go. I mean one can only put up with so much rah-rah speeches before it gets stale. But it was nice to hear from legislators I\’ve seldom heard from, from areas of the state I seldom get to.

Brian Davis was a fairly impressive speaker, as was Ed Matthews. Now normally one would label Ed Matthews as the sacrificial lamb in the 4th District race, since it is pretty safe DFL territory, however, Ed certainly has a plurality of energy.

\”Surprise\” speaker of the night was Tom Coburn, the Republican stalwart of Oklahoma….whose young granddaughter apparently thought that Minnesota was a type of soda. He\’s one of the good guys in the US Senate and it was a pleasure to hear him speak. He repeated his appeal for Republicans to behave like Republicans. Although this mesage was somewhat muted since he then talked about how great McCain was.

Marty Seifert was the final speaker of the evening. For those of you that have never had a chance to hear Marty speak it\’s always a treat. And it helps that his words have always been backed by action.

But for the most part it was a relatively dull evening. Probably the most exciting moment was when a Ronulan briefly interjected Ron Paul\’s name into Coburn\’s speech which was met with spotty applause. However, Coburn\’s later rebuttal was met with overwhelming applause. This was just the opening rally so it\’s hard to determine what the breakdown will be but things may get interesting tomorrow.

I have a feeling that the anonymous anti-Ron Paul letter that was sent out to delegates/alternates earlier this week did more harm that good….at least from a unity perspective. There was much talk about the fact that Ron Paul will not be speaking at the state convention, although he will be speaking at a rally outside the state convention tomorrow morning. Personally I would support just letting Ron Paul speak at the convention because honestly….what\’s the harm?? It\’s not like any of the delegates doesn\’t already know what he\’s about.

In any case, so far the state convention is off to a relatively uneventful start. It may or may not continue that way. I\’ll liveblog anything exciting but otherwise I\’ll do my best to keep awake by catching up on political computer work.