On July 14th in Grand Island, the State Republican Party will have their convention. It is looking more and more likely that their will be fireworks and hopefully a few changes for the old guard of the party. It remains to be seen if the state party will follow their own constitution and by laws. But so far things are not looking good.
For the first time in anyone's memory the state GOP is hiring "Extra Security" to manage the state convention? Why? Well it seems the Ron Paul supporters have gotten themselves involved in the state party. Won some leadership positions at the county level, and helped vote in a majority of delegates to the convention for Ron Paul. Of course the state party leadership is all up in arms about this, and quite frankly is going to do their best to slap these folks down.
Right now the party leadership is using the talking point "Delegates have to do the will of the people" to make the Ron Paul supporters look bad. When the truth is nothing in the NE GOP constitution or bylaws says delegates have to vote for the winner of the state primary. So the rules, such as they are, are clearly on the side of the folks pushing for Ron Paul. It remains to be seen if the party leaders will follow the rules, or just make stuff up. My money is on some serious fireworks happening this coming week.
Some excellent reporting about this here -
security-doubled-at-gop-convention-in-anticipation-of-ron-paul-insurgency
And a party insider says more about it here -
GOP Chairman takes one for the team
The real truth is the establishment would have lost the chairmanship if a vote had been held, so Mark Fahleson bailed out of his race for committeeman and will stay on to avoid a vote. How is that for listening to the people? The truth is they will probably lose anyway in the spring when the vote must be held as the term expires. But at least by keeping the old guard in place until after November the party insiders hope to slide into some nice cushy job in the Romney administration. (Good luck with that agenda)!
There are some really telling comments from both sides of this issue on both of the stories I linked to. Bring popcorn and a soda!
The real story is not the fact that there are squabbles going on inside the GOP, both nationally and at the state level, everyone knows that and about the Ron Paul folks trying to shake things up and bring in their own ideas. The surprising thing is that the entrenched leadership in our state is now so worried about losing that they are bringing in outside security to manage their own people?