1994 was a minor year, politics wise. I remember getting an application to be a nominee for delegate to the state convention. I was thinking about it but the deadline had passed by the time I looked closely at the paperwork. My thought was that I snoozed so I loozed.
That year I officially ran for the position of Precinct Committee Officer. Seeing your name on the ballot in the voting booth is actually somewhat anti-climactic. If you have ever seen you name, then you have seen your name.
Come 1996 I was not going to miss out on the chance to be a state delegate. When the paperwork came in I immediately filled it out and sent it in. At the district caucus I found that I was one of about 53 people who had submitted the application by the deadline. Those people who had submitted applications were going to be given the opportunity to speak for a minute to introduce themselves. I announced my support for Alan Keyes and made the statement at the top of this blog, “We cannot sacrifice what is right for what is expedient.” I was the only person who received any kind of applause.
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| Alan Keyes (biography.com) |
Of course, though, we had to be fair to those who missed the deadline so the caucus was opened for nominations from the floor. At the head of the line was the chairman of the "34th District Republicans for Bob Dole." He had gone out and gotten pledges from people to support Dole. This guy stood up and was nominating people five, six, seven at a time. When others started getting tired of his tactic they tried to stop it, to which he gave us a lecture on how we were trying to block the democratic process. We did reach a compromise: he was only allowed to nominate three people at a time.
When all was said and done there were about 151 nominees for delegate to the state convention -- almost three times as many as had submitted their applications on time. There were so many nominees that we stopped having introductory statements by the candidates. I made up my mind that I would not vote for anyone whom I remembered as having been nominated by the Bob Dole pimp. (His main point about Dole was that "we owed it to him.")
I do not remember how many delegates our district was to send to the convention. I was selected as an alternate. I did not to go.
Politics is even scarier than making laws, which is Mark Twain said was scarier than making sausages. I was disheartened by the process and did not run again in 1996.
How ludicrous is the process? At one Republican county convention, Dan Savage was one of the delegates. He was very vocal.
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| Dan Savage (dallasobserver.com) |
Another scary party of the process is the "secret ballot." Have you wondered why you get calls mainly from campaigns for people whom you would nominally support but not too many from the opposition? That is because one of the tools the political parties use is a printout that shows the voting trends of the people in an area. Do you vote mainly Republican? Mainly Democrat? Split between the parties? These printouts show it.
The system needs an overhaul. The American people did the unforgivable last year by voting for an outsider. Don't we know who are overlords are? How dare we!
We need to hang in there. Keep up the good fight. And keep the faith.
Matt, your post deserves a considered response, and at this late hour (literally, and metaphorically), all I'm capable of is snark.
ReplyDeleteConsider – what if... you succeed completely. You have a moderate grass roots coalition of common sense conservatives across the country. What the Tea Party should have been: effective and uncorrupted.
What then? Is that winning? Or is the game being played in many other arenas, many of which are arguably more important than legacy party politics?
There are at least a few hundred million dollars chasing mass psych manipulation in a half a dozen to a dozen silos all over the world... that's an informed estimate. Sounds like real money; it really isn't. But it can buy results with the state of the art, such as it is.
Please also take a look at Ben Hunt's essay, Sheep Logic at the blog site Epsilon Theory.
Thanks for this post Matt. I think most of us here in flyover land (and other places) have created our own brand of political faith.
ReplyDeleteWe're done.
Watch Alabama as the Deep State tries to tar-and-feather Roy Moore. McConnell and his merry band of Swamp Things must be sweating bullets. It seems that Alabama voters are distrustful of the WaPo "news" report. Go figure.
Your first-hand experience with the "system" is fascinating Matt! I've never felt the urge to jump in like you have...running a small-town chamber of commerce is as close as I ever got. And that was years ago. Thanks for sharing. :)
ReplyDelete