Post-Wrapup Wrapup
June 3rd, 2008 by 
Kevin
There were a few responses to my MN GOP Convention Wrapup, and I think there is more that needs to be said on a couple points….and the following points are almost going to guarantee I piss everyone off.
First of all, just because a group is a minority, doesn\’t mean they don\’t have the right to be heard. And while one commenter tried to pass them off as an extremely small minority it\’s clear they weren\’t. Roughly 400-500 people attended Paul\’s rally on Friday morning. That\’s a quarter of the convention delegates. It\’s certainly not that 1.x% that some keep passing them off as.
But really doesn\’t the percentage matter?? No. It\’s not up to any committee or party leader to decide who gets heard. That\’s up to the delegates. For the nominating committee to pre-emptively decide that certain groups should even have a chance to make their case is wrong. For a chairman to exclude someone who has a clear following, no matter how small is wrong and demonstrates bias. That is wrong.
Of course the Ronulans share some blame here as well. As a group they engaged in very caustic behavior early on, which raised the hackles of many Republicans early on. Early on they left the impression as a tinfoil hat crowd intent on a no-prisoners scorched earth approach to politics. Clearly they made no friends up front and the repercussions of that continue to haunt them even today.
Perhaps even more to their disadvantage was the clear inexperience of most of their numbers and clearly their leadership. While I know for a fact that at least some of their numbers have been party members for awhile and are not new to the process, as a group they clearly were. Parliamentary chess is an art form at best, and a mind-numbingly pain in the ass at worst. But knowledge of Robert\’s Rules and parliamentary politics are a pre-requisite for anyone hoping to achieve anything.
That knowledge was not evident amongst most of the Ronulans. More than a few times I quite clearly saw where they were trying to go and what they were trying to accomplish. How to get there was obviously unknown to the Ronulans, but was pretty obvious to many others. I remember several instances where I remarked to the person standing or seated next to me that \”Ohhhh, I think [the Ronulans] got [the chairman] on this one…..\” but predictably the Ronulans would foul up the attempt by insisting instead upon abusing points of order/privilege by grandstanding. Guess what? Points of Order/Privilege don\’t actually accomplish anything…you have to make a motion. And here you just screwed up your chance at the mic with whining instead of progress.
The Ronulans had a heck of a networking system setup, including text messaging like an infinite number of monkeys on a infinite number of phones. But instead of offering up a work of Shakespeare they offered up pointless complaints rather than a substantive motion. Almost depressing really that a sizeable group can reach that leave of cohesion and organization but not be able to accomplish anything.
In the end I think one of my commenters said it best, and I think it can be applied to all sides, and that is the old adage:
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
Here\’s to hoping we wise up before November, although I bet a round of drinks against it.
[Crossposted to True North]
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5 Comments »
June 3rd, 2008 at 7:37 am
Were there really 400-500 ronulan delegates/alternates? Somebody who went to the speech told me that the crowd was at least a third of just curious people looking to see what he’d say, if there would be fireworks, etc.
As a semi-detatched onlooker myself, I can’t help but feel that the ronulans and the party people really had two separate and not entirely incompatible agendas. The party people wanted to endorse Norm and get themselves elected to national delegates as a reward for all the years they’ve put in. For them, it is a largely ceremonial function at this point. For the Ronulans, the delegate slots were functional, to make something happen at the convention, whether it was to give old Ron an opportunity to speak or the more obscure goal of challenging McCain at the convention. (I don’t get the math on that one.) Forgetting the delusional people who thought they could get a Paul challenge at the convention, there’s nothing inherently wrong with having the goal of letting Paul speak at the convention. If the speech at Rochester is any evidence, he’s a classy guy, with some strong convictions and not the party anarchist that some people make him out to be.
The entirely unsurprising yet dissapointing thing to me is how the party establishment closed ranks hard against people who were essentially newbies to the party process. That’s not the way to renew the party, treat newcomers like invaders to be repelled. Maybe they were rude and rough around the edges. Maybe they didn’t know the rules. I’ve seen a few conventions and rudeness and agression, even between longtime activists happens any time there is some hotly contested issue or candidate (Pawlenty-Sullivan got kind of ugly on the floor)but the difference this time was that it looked to me like old guard vs. new people and that doesn’t speak well for growing the party.
June 3rd, 2008 at 9:39 am
Well said Margaret! You’re exactly right!
June 3rd, 2008 at 10:39 am
I’m still trying to understand what the exact nature of the “offense” was here, and who was at fault. IMHO it always takes two to make a fight. The party mainstream, or whatever you want to call us, took [admittedly clumsy] steps to counter the tactics they had seen from the “upstarts.” These “new people” were coming into the party proceedings for the express purpose of “taking over the party,” endorsing their own candidate, and imposing a new set of guiding principles and policies. They were NOT coming (from the obvious actions of their most outspoken) to help the Republican Party elect their chosen candidates to office. There are too many of them who say “I will not vote for McCain” for it to be otherwise. I’m sorry, but if you will not support the inevitable nominee of the Party, you have no business going to the Convention at all. It was obvious that the Ron Paul contingent was united in the singular goal of overturning that very simple requirement.
Could it have been handled more objectively and fairly? I thought so, and proposed such a process. I don’t think there will be a next time, and we may never see many of these “new people” again. Even had they gained their aims.
June 3rd, 2008 at 11:20 am
J, I agree with half of what you say. Will a lot of these new people dissappear? Probably. But that’s true in every convention that has a hot issue or campaign. Some will stay. They might change or they might change the party (probably not dramatically). It’s an essentially conservative process (small c). The party regulars didn’t have to close ranks so hard to keep the show on the road.
At these types of things people ALWAYS say If my candidate doesn’t win I’ll never vote for X. Maybe they won’t. Maybe they will. I remember people saying the same thing after the 13th ballot in Sullivan Pawlenty.
June 6th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Two thoughts:
1) The Ron Paul folks got beat because they got out-organized at the state convention. This was suprising to me given that they were extremely well-organized in the fourth and fifth district conventions.
2) Many have advised me, as a BPOU chair who supported McCain early on, to try to work the newbies into the process. I have invited newbies to the the caucus (both Ron Paul folks and others) to work in the trenches in our local legislative campaign. The non-Paul newbies have responded and have provided new energy to our BPOU. The Paul newbies have responded with one thing: The Sounds of Silence.