My Caucus

This post is completely unrelated to fundraising and graphs. I went to the first caucus of my life yesterday here in Maine. I wanted to share my experience and a letter I wrote when I returned home.

As I write this, the results aren't all in yet but so far with 68% of the votes in it looks like RP will be getting 3rd place with 19% of the vote to 21% for McCain and 52% for Romney.

Now what about the caucus itself. Right as I walked in the door, there were piles of things to be signed, getting republicans on the ballot for this position or that.. when I declined to sign the form to put our "republican" sheriff on the ballot, there were disparaging remarks made about my girlfriend and I as we walked away... something to the tune of "nothing like a good republican"... dripping with sarcasm, of course... I felt quite good about my decision after hearing a few speakers, including the sheriff.

Following the indiscriminate signing of yellow papers by the 200-300 people in attendance was about 1.5-2 hours of speeches by 6 or 7 people who are either running for some local office or a family member speaking for them. The over whelming theme of the day was mushy emotional talks about the importance of family, "honor", and how great it is to be a Repblican. The sheriff talked about all the "wonderful programs" he had helped create and all the "outreach" he helped to initiate from the department to the community. Tag Romney told bad jokes and pandered to the Patriots and Red Sox fans in the room with some anecdotes about working for the Dodgers and being a big Red Sox fan... then he went on to some anecdotes about how "cheap" Mitt is. "Everyone" loved it. We even had a young lady who was stumping for her father (running for county rep, I think) who is serving in Iraq, yet somehow running for office here in Maine. I think it goes without saying that everyone in the room supports the troops... but running for your first term as a local politician from another continent doesn't seem like a tenable strategy to me...

The Grand Finale was a speech by Senator Susan Collins. I was mildly annoyed with the complete lack of content up to this point... but by the time Susan was done speaking I was mentally counting down the days until I can switch back to being a registered independent. She started right into a list of the faults of our congressional rep, Tom Allen (I'm sure he has plenty, but it seemed out of place to me) including the fact that he missed over 100 roll call votes, to which the Romney supporter standing next to me and myself both quietly said "is that bad?!"... In between her attacks of Tom Allen (which were plentiful and VERY well received) she filled us in on her fantastic Republican credentials.. With such gems as "I tripled funding for diabetes research" and "I've never missed a vote" not to mention all the bills she has sponsored... I sent the following letter to her when I got home:

Senator Collins,

I was in Bath today where you came to talk to the Republican caucus goers. Thank you for coming. I had a few concerns I would like your response to.

You mentioned a Senate resolution condemning the "General Betray Us" ad by MoveOn.org. I am very concerned that the Senate is wasting time and money discussing meaningless newspaper ads. What purpose did this condemnation serve? It seems like a purely political maneuver... I think using the Senate to "condemn" a non-profit organization for exercising their freedom of speech (however misguided, or not) is an embarrassment to the Senate and our country.

The second topic from today that I wanted to bring up is your mention of tripling the funding of diabetes research... Why is the government doing medical research at all, and why should I, a conservative, vote for someone who uses increases in spending as a selling point?

I don't think you mentioned cutting spending once... I don't think a single Republican that spoke today mentioned spending cuts. There was plenty of talk of lowering taxes... and "successful" programs... but not one mention of a program that should be cut. With a 3 trillion dollar budget, 250 billion deficit, and a 9.2 trillion dollar debt, it seems like cutting spending should be on the tip of every conservative tongue. Our debt will soon exceed our GDP (and might already if adjusted for inflation)... this is a crisis, not even a few million $600 checks will help if we can't reign in and reverse this trend towards explosive government spending.

To me, being a conservative means fighting over every dollar spent as well as every dollar taxed. It means closing the doors of federal bureaucracies and ruthlessly trimming the fat in programs that cannot be terminated. It feels like the Republican party is no longer the conservative party at all, but rather the right wing of the Democratic party with a different set of pet programs.

Thank you,
dan bachelder

Not only was there no talk of cutting spending, there was really no talk of policy at all. I guess the assumption is, that if you are in that room, you either already know all about every speaker's policies or you just trust them to do "what is right". Well not this Republican. I can watch attack ads and listen to feel good emotional BS on the Hallmark channel right here from the comfort of my couch. I didn't take 4 hours out of my Saturday to listen to it standing in a 100 degree gymnasium. I guess I can understand the smugness and preaching-to-the-choir mentality that was going on there, but that doesn't make it any less ridiculous. If you didn't know better you'd think the Republican party was having a renaissance! Everything is peachy... of course a Republican will be president after the next election... of course Republican policy is right on target.... of course the huge turnout is due to their successes, not their failures.

After all the speeches we broke up into groups by town to cast our vote for the presidential preference poll and choose delegates. 13 people showed up from my tiny town (population 2-3k) which I was told was a record turn out. As they talked about that fact, several people spontaneously made it known that they are embarrassed to tell people they are Republican, one woman said she wouldn't tell people because she was sure it would cost her business customers!

The first order of business was selecting officers for our town party... not one volunteer. The next order of business was selecting delegates.. we get 9 slots to fill... so I assumed we'd be arguing over who would get to go... nope.. all three Ron Paul voters became delegates, along with 2 others... 4 remaining open slots, no volunteers... keep in mind the actual state caucus is 3 months away. Next order of business, the preference poll which went thusly:

Mitt: 6
Paul: 3
Huck: 2
Keys: 1
McCain: 1

While my girlfriend filled out her write-in ballot for Ron Paul there were audible and visible negative responses from the women on either side of her, both women were in the group that spoke up about being embarrassed to tell people they were Republican and one of them was the business owner I mentioned earlier. Immediately following the count, a Romney supporter made the motion to close business and go home, it was seconded and we left.

My conclusions... the high turn out is due to the collapse of the Republican party (it certainly wasn't due to an influx of Ron Paul support), party members see it, so they came, hoping to have some impact... to hear some good news and have the opportunity to turn things around... but, of course they can't see the salvation of their party when it's staring them right in the face. At the end of they day, every one of them was willing to sign their name on anything stamped with an "R" and applaud and cheer for every social program mentioned and pat themselves on the back for every mention of "family" or "honor" or "The Troops". I can say with certainty now, that even on the local level the Republican party is no friend to the true conservative and it's pretty obvious why people are literally embarrassed to be a part of it.

If I am called, I will go to the Republican meeting in our town, just to have the chance to ask them if they share my concerns at all... If the response is favorable, I may consider involving myself more deeply in local party politics in order to have an influence on the line of discourse at the next caucus.

A quick note to Ron Paul supporters... If you're having a conversation while people are speaking (no matter what you think of them) you're a huge jerk and should be asked to leave. If you can't be bothered to go to your local caucus, why are you involved at all? With all the signs around my county, I was expecting a pretty good contingent of support at the caucus... didn't happen. Your money, your letters, your emails, sign waving, all those videos you watched on youtube, all those comments you wrote on the internets, all the talking you have been doing for months... all of it is worthless if you can't even be bothered to vote. The rubber meets the road in the voting booth and if you can't do your part, you don't exist and never did.

Needless to say.. the caucus made me cranky.... but at least we got the majority of delegates in my town. Thanks for reading.