Why a presidential caucus or primary?<\/p>\n
Last fall, officials for both \u201cmajor\u201d Nevada parties were loudly celebrating \u201call the new people this will bring into the process.\u201d Then, when those people actually showed up at their state conventions this spring, chaos ensued.<\/p>\n
The Democrats hadn\u2019t rented a big enough room for enough time to even sort out who was a credentialed delegate and should be allowed to vote. They had to close down and do it all again, a few weeks later.<\/p>\n
And what happened at the GOP carnival in Carson City two weekends ago was even harder to sort out, at first. Reports from party regulars were that the Ron Paul minority (the Texas congressman came in second to Mitt Romney in the party\u2019s Nevada caucuses this winter) had shown up and tried to \u201ctake over\u201d the convention, or else \u201cwreck it,\u201d though no one could explain precisely why they\u2019d want to do that.<\/p>\n
After talking to a number of participants, both those who were on the stage and those out in the cheap seats, I must conclude the clash of expectations on view at the Peppermill in Reno April 26 was actually more interesting and important that the rumored attempt at a \u201cminority takeover,\u201d which is not what actually happened.<\/p>\n
First, America does not have two major parties. It has one major party — the Incumbent Party — which is divided into two social clubs, the Republicrats and the Demopublicans.<\/p>\n
This single party has a single agenda: Tell the voters you stand for \u201cchange,\u201d and then deliver them no change at all, except incremental further steps toward the brand of state socialism popularized by Bismarck, Mussolini, Hitler, and Roosevelt the Second.<\/p>\n
If we have two DIFFERENT major parties, tell me which one, placed in power, would quickly end the War on Drugs; pull our troops out of 103 nations overseas; restore the Second Amendment right to own a machine gun without having to sign your name or show a photo ID; end the actuarially bankrupt and constitutionally unauthorized Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security Ponzi schemes; shut down the Federal Reserve Board and put us back on a sound, non-inflating dollar made of gold and\/or silver. Tell me which one would declare that children belong to their parents, shutting down the state \u201cChild Protection\u201d kidnapping racket (kids have been kidnapped and killed for an offense as minor as mom not \u201cgetting them their shots\u201d — see Cameron Justin Demery, Oct. 14, 1996) and the vastly expensive Government Youth Propaganda Camps which are dumbing down our children into quasi-literate sociopaths.<\/p>\n
That would be \u201cchange.\u201d And the One Party has none to offer.<\/p>\n
I come from New England. Many fine New Englanders are the Catholic descendants of Irish and Italian immigrants. They\u2019re against abortion, suspicious of much current \u201cPolitically Correct\u201d chicanery, and — having had three generations to start a business and accrue some wealth — balk at higher taxes.<\/p>\n
Looking at the platforms of the \u201ctwo parties,\u201d they should be Republicans. But they\u2019d be ostracized by their friends and families if they registered as anything but Democrats. The Republicans are the fat cats with the Mayflower names who live up on the hill and won\u2019t let the darned Swamp Yankee (insert colorful racial epithet of your choice) into the country club.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a social thing.<\/p>\n
Over the decades, the agenda for a Nevada Republicrat state convention — especially in a year when the presidential nominee already stands anointed — has become ritualized. Sign in a few hundred delegates, most of whom know each other and — for that matter — knew each other\u2019s parents. Show some \u201cpep rally\u201d videos designed to stir up the crowd and ridicule the Demopublicans. Troop out the party\u2019s old war horses and celebrity guests to take a bow and — in at least one case — actually sing a song.<\/p>\n
Now, with lunchtime approaching, seek a voice vote OK of the credential committee\u2019s delegate slate for the national convention Sept. 1. After all, the nominee is a given, so the challenge here is to make sure no one important is offended: Sen. Ensign has to be a delegate, and Gov. Gibbons, and on down the list of longtime party loyalists who have been willing to make the phone calls and stamp the envelopes and who — most important — are known to have the $5,000 necessary to make the trip.<\/p>\n
In Reno April 26, convention chairman Bob Beers said the \u201cAyes\u201d had accepted the party delegate slate. But a count of hands was called for. Turns out the \u201cAyes\u201d didn\u2019t have it — by a margin of about 670 to 430.<\/p>\n
The eager Ron Paulista delegates — accompanied by a fair number of newcomers who signed on as Mitt Romney delegates, without whom the Paulistas could not have raised the majority that voted down the \u201ccompany delegate slate\u201d — didn\u2019t realize they\u2019d been invited to attend a formal social gathering with rituals as time-honored as the garter toss and the father dancing with the bride. They thought they were there to participate in \u201clive\u201d politics — to elect a slate of delegates to the national convention, and instruct those delegates through the mechanism of a state party platform as to which issues they wish the national party to bring before the electorate next fall — things like shutting down the Federal Reserve and restoring sound money before we\u2019re heading to the grocery store with our wheelbarrows.<\/p>\n
These people have never met John Ensign or Jim Gibbons, had certainly never heard either one address any of their major issues, and didn\u2019t give a hoot whether either man got a seat in Minneapolis Sept. 1.<\/p>\n
One group was there for a social event. The other still believed that political change can be effected in America through political activism.<\/p>\n
The faith of the Paul and Romney delegates — their desire to see the campaign confront real issues like our eroding standard of living caused by the purposeful inflation of the Federal Reserve — is naive, but a precious thing. That this faith will be crushed by a system that values nothing other than \u201ctriangulating\u201d to 51 percent — this year — is very sad.<\/p>\n
But the folks who started out \u201cin charge\u201d at the Peppermill April 26, assuming all the ritualized business could be handled with some quick voice votes, are not evil people. Republican Chairwoman Sue Lowden showed great political courage in standing up against mandatory vaccinations — correctly labeling them \u201cnot as effective as they claim\u201d (she could have added some are outright dangerous) — in the state senate a few years back. That brave stand gave the Culinary Union all the ammo they needed to bring her down, absurdly claiming the young mother was \u201cin favor of childhood disease.\u201d<\/p>\n
And convention chairman Bob Beers is as close to a lower-tax, smaller government Republican as this state party has produced in a long while.<\/p>\n
But one team showed up ready to reminisce about old times and play a little lawn croquet on April 26, only to find themselves in a hall with 900 strangers suited up for lacrosse.<\/p>\n
You see, when leaders of both parties crowed last fall about how happy they were to see so many new people being \u201cbrought into the process\u201d by the new Nevada caucuses, they meant \u201cregistering to vote for our guys.\u201d They never imagined these characters would actually crash their annual tea party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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