The video above covers points that I raised in my two posts so far about the Jefferson County caucus. Please read my St. Patrick's Day Death March and my take on the use of a draft call to convention for more information about those issues. The video above includes footage of caucus goers entering and exiting via the back door in violation of caucus procedures.
The pictures above were taken at the March 17th Jefferson County Republican caucus. They are photographs of the Missouri Republican Party's Call to Convention; however, there's a problem with that document. It's a draft version, not the official call to convention issued by the Missouri GOP.
If you click through the photographs above, you'll notice that there are large, faded letters in the middle of each page. The "R" on the first page isn't even recognizable, but on other pages you can usually make out one to three 4" high letters of the word "DRAFT". These pages were obviously photocopied and that process obscured the "DRAFT" watermark.
As you can see in that sign--making some allowance for the spelling of "electronic"--cameras were prohibited. Perhaps part of the reason for prohibiting cameras was because the organizers did not want anyone to know that they were using a draft call to convention.
So, why use a draft call to convention?
The draft document used in Jefferson County included language that would bind the caucus's delegation to the results of Missouri's February presidential preference primary (paragraphs 3 thru 5). However, the final and official call to convention includes the following language instead of those three paragraphs and specifically precludes the binding of delegates to the February caucus results:
No delegate to the Republican National Convention shall be bound by the results of any
Republican Presidential Primary held before March 6, 2012. Upon being nominated and prior to
any vote to elect national convention delegates or national convention alternate delegates, each
nominee for national convention delegate or national convention alternate delegate shall notify the
chair of the Congressional District Convention or of the State Convention, as appropriate, of the
Republican Presidential Candidate who that nominee pledges to support on the first ballot at the
Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida. No nominee shall identify more than one
Republican Presidential Candidate who that nominee pledges to support if elected as a national
convention delegate or national convention alternate delegate. Prior to any vote to elect national
convention delegates or national convention alternate delegates, the chair shall announce the
Republican Presidential Candidate who each nominee will be pledged to support. National
convention delegates and national convention alternate delegates chosen at the Conventions must
pledge their support to the Republican Presidential Candidate who they identified at the
Convention at which they were elected and will be bound to cast their vote for said candidate on
the first ballot at the Republican National Convention.
It stands to reason that a draft version of the call to convention was used in an effort to bind the caucus's delegation to Rick Santorum--the winner of the February presidential preference primary. However, Hanlon's Razor suggests an alternative explanation: incompetence. So take your pick: 1) disingenuous political maneuvering or 2) ham-handed event preparation.
Below the "read more" link is an animation of the photographs of the draft call to convention. It runs through the pages twice. On the second iteration, the word "DRAFT" is overlaid to make the original watermark a little easier to recognize.
Bob McCarty was pretty disgusted with the Republican caucus in St. Charles county. That caucus ended abruptly when police were called and has since been rescheduled for April 10th. Bob has written extensively about what he dubbed the "St. Patrick's Day Massacre":
The Republican caucus in Jefferson County had its own share of irregularities; however, unlike the relatively quick demise of the St. Charles caucus, the caucus in Jefferson County ran until around 7PM. By that time less than half of the original 424 participants had soldiered through the day-long death march. Jake Wagman of the St. Louis Post Dispatch noted that voting for the delegates did not start until 6:30PM. The reason that the caucus took as long as it did was because one faction squandered the time of the other participants through the use of dilatory tactics with the strategic objective of attriting support for the other factions.
With a scheduled start time of 10AM, that means that participants who didn't leave early were at Hillsboro Intermediate School for over nine hours. In fact, as Travis Forrest explains in the video below, some people arrived as early as 7AM:
Travis also explains that he and others that arrived early tried to enter the building by the back door. Several volunteers were allowed in; however, Travis and another couple were told to enter through the front door after 8AM.
Videographer Brian Mueller also shot video of the "volunteers" gathering inside the school.
The strategy this year for Missouri's caucus system, basically, require coordination among political factions prior to the start of the caucus. To maximize your faction's influence in the caucus you need to have the support of 50% + 1 votes. If your faction controls 50% + 1, then it is relatively easy to guarantee that all delegates elected at that caucus support your candidate. In the 2012 Missouri caucus, there were three viable factions: Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum with a few Newt Gingrich supporters as well.
Each Missouri caucus is run according to Robert's Rules of Order (at right). Participants familiar with parliamentary process can maneuver the caucus to their favor.
There's nothing wrong with collaborating between factions and leveraging your knowledge of Robert's Rules. Ultimately, that's the whole strategy. However, denying access to the building, much like dilatory tactics, is a way of unfairly giving your faction a strategic advantage in the caucus. At the Jefferson County caucus this meant that the people left standing at the front door had trouble finding outlets for their computers.
The chairman of the Jefferson County Republican Central Committee even tried to prevent a printer from being brought into the caucus despite the fact that she herself had brought one. Ultimately, the printer made it in and was setup underneath a chair because there wasn't a better place to put it that also had access to a power outlet.
All of this points to a strategy of discomforting some participants while prolonging that discomfort until the electoral outcome could be manipulated to the favor of one faction. That's not how a caucus is suppose to be run.
The Missouri Precinct Project (MOPP) held a meeting at Pillar in the Valley this past Saturday. They discussed caucusing and voter fraud issues. MOPP President Frieda Keough MC'd the event which was attended by about 80 people. John Putnam from Jasper County talked about caucusing. Linda Boyd Smith spoke about voter fraud in St. Louis and St. Louis county.
Thanks to Wes Bradley for the photos above from last night's After Party which was about caucusing. The St. Louis Tea Party is working to raise awareness about Missouri's March county caucuses because the Show Me State will select our president through the caucus system. You may have heard about the February 7th primary; however, that primary is meaningless, since the March caucus will start the process of selecting Missouri's 52 delegates to the Republican National Convention. Make sure you get your county caucus, the district convention, and the state convention on your schedule.
The feedback that I've gotten about last night's Caucusing After Party has been positive with the exception that the venue was too small for the crowd which made it hard to hear the speakers at times. I think the structure of the training worked well. Ruth Carlson of Life is Political, ran a mock caucus which followed the caucus agenda provided by the Missouri GOP. At each agenda item, Ruth would take questions from the audience and provide an explanation of what was to come.
If you've never participated in a caucus, it's hard to understand how they work. The rules of the caucus are defined during each county caucus, so simply coming with a slate of candidates that back your favorite Republican presidential candidate is insufficient, but planning is also difficult since the rules aren't known in advance. With that in mind, here are some pre-caucus planning steps that you can take:
If supporters of a particular candidate control 50% + 1 votes at a given caucus then they will (probably) get all of the delegates and alternates from that county caucus
If no particular candidate's supporters have 50% + 1 votes at a given county caucus then there will (probably) be a more proportional assignment of delegates and alternates from that county caucus
You should invite your like-minded friends and neighbors--the people you know support the candidate you support or at least share your principals--to the caucus and make sure that they plan to be there. Maybe you could car pool with them to the caucus location.
Numbers 1 and 2 drive whether or not your county caucus will be "winner take all" or proportional. I see two main factions developing before March: 1) GOP establishment probably behind Romney and 2) Ron Paul. Maybe Gingrich or Santorum will hold on until Missouri's March caucuses. In my opinion, Tea Partiers should form a third, perhaps uncommitted, faction and reach out to these factions now. I think Ron Paul's supporters may be easier to work with here. In 2008 they were shafted by the state GOP (here are some examples: example 1,
example 2,
example 3,
example 4,
example 5,
example 6,
example 7,
example 8,
example 9,
example 10,
example 11,
example 12,
example 13,
example 14,
example 15,
example 16,
example 17,
example 18,
example 19,
example 20, and
example 21), so this year is a grudge match for Ron Paul's Missouri team. They may be willing to put some Tea Partiers on their caucus slate if that will push their caucus representation over that 50% + 1 threshold. If you're one of those Tea Partiers, it does not mean that you have to support Ron Paul at the District and State conventions. This is merely a strategy for driving Tea Party representation at those conventions by compromising at the March county caucus.
Tea Party Conservative who began blogging at http://RebootCongress.NET when TARP passed. Email me: contact@RebootCongress.net. Help support my work: Donate Bitcoins
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