bae
3-3-12, 4:10pm
I attended the Republican caucus here this morning.
Attendance was 4x what I have seen at previous ones. And the crowd was much younger.
Support for the various presidential candidates was roughly:
- 30% Romney
- 30% Newt
- 20% Santorum
- 20% Paul
Various supporters all advanced quite reasonable arguments for their preferred candidates, no mud-slinging occurred, it was all very civilized. Nobody slung any particularly vicious mud at the Democrats either, it was a much more polite forum than, say, these forums at times :-)
Everyone expressed a willingness to pitch in and get behind whatever candidate was ultimately selected, even if it wasn't Their Guy/Gal.
Non-Romney supporters were overwhelmingly concerned that Romney was just a RINO, and wouldn't stand a chance against Obama for real. There was a strong "Romney is just The Machine's choice, not the people's choice" flavor in the air as well.
When it came time to elect delegates to the next-level caucus/conventions, an interesting thing happened - Paul supporters and Newt supporters all stepped forward to run for the spots, supporters of other candidates didn't seem fired up enough to participate to the next level, which requires more of an effort because of time and travel.
So all the delegates we sent up were Paul/Newt people, pretty evenly divided.
The main policy concerns brought up during the platform discussion were not social issues, nobody was particularly interested in them. The main issues were liberty, limited government, and fiscal responsibility. Nobody wanted free government cheese, very few wanted the government to "fix" the economy. There was widespread support for the government "getting out of the way of the economy".
We examined local voting registration records and patterns carefully, and decided that this primarily-Democratic county is only that way because the Democrats actually organize and show up to vote :-)
Interesting times.
With some luck, I'll be heading to Tampa later in the year, and will observe The Process In Action.
Attendance was 4x what I have seen at previous ones. And the crowd was much younger.
Support for the various presidential candidates was roughly:
- 30% Romney
- 30% Newt
- 20% Santorum
- 20% Paul
Various supporters all advanced quite reasonable arguments for their preferred candidates, no mud-slinging occurred, it was all very civilized. Nobody slung any particularly vicious mud at the Democrats either, it was a much more polite forum than, say, these forums at times :-)
Everyone expressed a willingness to pitch in and get behind whatever candidate was ultimately selected, even if it wasn't Their Guy/Gal.
Non-Romney supporters were overwhelmingly concerned that Romney was just a RINO, and wouldn't stand a chance against Obama for real. There was a strong "Romney is just The Machine's choice, not the people's choice" flavor in the air as well.
When it came time to elect delegates to the next-level caucus/conventions, an interesting thing happened - Paul supporters and Newt supporters all stepped forward to run for the spots, supporters of other candidates didn't seem fired up enough to participate to the next level, which requires more of an effort because of time and travel.
So all the delegates we sent up were Paul/Newt people, pretty evenly divided.
The main policy concerns brought up during the platform discussion were not social issues, nobody was particularly interested in them. The main issues were liberty, limited government, and fiscal responsibility. Nobody wanted free government cheese, very few wanted the government to "fix" the economy. There was widespread support for the government "getting out of the way of the economy".
We examined local voting registration records and patterns carefully, and decided that this primarily-Democratic county is only that way because the Democrats actually organize and show up to vote :-)
Interesting times.
With some luck, I'll be heading to Tampa later in the year, and will observe The Process In Action.