Chris McGraw: Ron Republicans Report!

This is what Chris wrote on Saturday night after returning from the Convention:

The Alaskan Republican Party State Convention took place in Anchorage from March 13th to 15th. I just got back home. This is my informal report.

There were somewhere in the neighborhood of 350 to 360 total delegates to the State Convention, as I recall (I don't remember the exact number and I could be significantly wrong on that).

As you may have heard, the Alaskan Ron Paulites were very organized and aggressive during our February 5th and 9th district conventions. We organized state-wide to crash the Republican convention, passed amazing platform changes and resolutions, and got a lot of us elected as delegates to the State Convention. After those successful district conventions, we kept working hard to organize and prepare for the State Convention. All told, we were able to secure 105 delegates to State, or roughly 30% of the total by my estimation. While we were not a majority, this made us a force to be reckoned with.

The convention was rife with controversy, the majority of it surrounding an attempted unseating of the chairman of the Alaska Republican Party by other forces within the party, including our governor Sarah Palin. The atmosphere was pretty intense and the news reporters were ready for big headlines. Our Ron Paul group, which according to some was the largest and most organized group of individuals at the convention, had to decide which powers we could ally ourselves with to best further our agenda, and during the course of the convention we had to craft and change strategies constantly to stay in the game. I won't go into great detail concerning everything that happened, because you could probably write a novella about this convention, but I will say that it was better drama than television. I never expected to be quite so entertained by political maneuvering or parliamentary procedure!

We had several goals going into the convention, and although we were not successful on all fronts, we were overall *very* successful.

First the good news: We passed a LOT of platform changes and resolutions. The convention broke into subcommittees for these, focusing on general topics from the Alaska Republican Party platform including Constitutional Rights, Health & Family, Education, Jobs & Economy, National Defense, and others. For the most part we had very little control over which subcommittees we ended up on (aside from indicating a preference), because each subcommittee had to have as close to even representation from each district as possible, and we were assigned by the central committee which consisted mostly of party insiders (although we got a few RP'ers on there as well). As a result, some of the subcommittees ended up with great Ron Paul representation (as was the case in the Constitutional Rights subcommittee where we apparently had over half the delegates) and some of them ended up with poor Ron Paul representation (the unfortunate case in the National Defense subcommittee that I was on).

The amendments, changes, and resolutions that we had passed at local district levels (as well as some that we had not passed) showed up for consideration by these subcommittees. What came out of the subcommittees were effectively recommendations, and eventually reached the floor of the General Assembly the following day for consideration by the entire convention. Among these were platform changes and resolutions to abolish the IRS, oppose the Patriot Act and Real ID, eliminate the Department of Education, eliminate the Certificate of Need program for health care providers, support jury nullification by allowing defendents to argue the mertis and application of laws under which they are tried, eliminate the word "hemp" from the plank "we are against the legalization of marijuana/hemp," and many others. After considerable debate and a battle on the floor over parliamentary procudures that threatened many times to kill them entirely, these platform planks and resolutions were adopted by the Alaska Republican Party. The platform plank and corresponding resolution opposing the Patriot Act, NAIS, Real ID, and Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, and demanding their immediate repeal, both narrowly passed after many (increasingly panicky) attempts to defeat them by the anti-Paul crowd.

We were unsuccessful in attacking the party's support for the war in Iraq. We were simply unable to pull support from anyone outside of the Ron Paul delegates for this purpose and therefore unable to secure a majority.

In the Rules committee there was a heated battle to secure more national delegates for Ron Paul in the face of the Romney and Huckabee drop-outs. The essential argument was over the definition of "dropping out" of a presidential race, and our argument was that according to the state party's own rules we were entitled to 14 national delegates, and McCain was entitled to 12. Unfortunately, both the Romney and Huckabee campaigns sent letters to the convention explaining that their campaign "suspensions" were intended to reserve delegates rather than release them. In light of this, it was still possible we could move during the General Assembly to apportion those delegates to Paul and McCain, and maybe even win, but we determined it was unlikely so we took the following deal: In exchange for not bringing up the rules issue on the floor, we could pass a resolution stating the Alaska Republican Party would like Ron Paul to speak at the Republican National Convention. The deal happened and the resolution went through.

Overall, we made a lot of good inroads in the local party, made some great changes, established ourselves as a force, and got some great people in to go to national for Ron Paul. We learned a lot about parliamentary procedure, and I would recommend anyone planning on attending a convention read up on Robert's Rules of Order first, or you may find yourself and any issue you bring forth utterly defeated by the process.

I met and worked with some of the most amazing, intelligent, driven people at this convention. Its amazing what can happen when 100 Ron Paul supporters get together all at once. The camaraderie was astounding to me. Although we only controlled 30% of the delegates at the convention, I'd wager we accounted for approximately 90% of the total IQ points.

Anyway, there's TONS more to report, but I'm really tired, and I need to go to bed, and I've lost my train of thought.... I hope I can get copies of resolutions that passed.

Comments

[Conza88]

That is so awesome, its not funny.
I WANT TO BE THERE!
:'(

(cries)

Well, *saddles up* time to fight for Liberty here.

[El Buggo]

Thank you for reporting - it's way more interesting then you can imagine.

My best suggestion now would be to send the other delegates some RP DVDs

[Andy White]

This fight is just beggining. All these stories coming out from Alaska to Missouri prove that we can still win this. Lincoln went to the convention with 20 delegates. Polk and Garfield went with none. History shows we can still win. Inflation will prove Ron Paul was right the past 30 years. Keep up the fight everyone!

[Andy White]

The fight is not over. We can still win this thing. The victories of Polk, Lincoln, and Garfield prove it is possible. When inflation gets real bad all these morons will realize how right Ron Paul was. Keep up the fight everyone!

[William]

Amazing, enthralling and captivating.

[El Buggo]

I would like to see more reporting like this. A first hand report from Conventions and so on.

Need help and more reporting to get the focus on the delegation process.

Delegates should see the point, and be easiest to convince how important and useful this type of action is.

I cannot get enough people out of their chair by myself – that’s fore sure. I cannot even spell and I’m not even a citizen.

Start here if you don’t understand how important and useful this is, or if you don’t have a clue where to start:

http://www.dailypaul.com/node/36650