Oakland County GOP Convention August 2010

The Oakland County Republicans held their first convention of 2010, and it was a wild one. From the rousing speeches given by the candidates to the wild candidate selection process, this convention was considerably different than the slower-paced conventions of the past. As the local media was likely at the far smaller Democratic county convention being held at a far smaller venue, I'll do their job and report on what took place at this well-attended event.

Over 1400 precinct delegates were elected to the GOP convention, which was held at the massive auditorium of a nearby school- for comparison, the Democrats had maybe 400 (that's all their venue holds) attend their convention. The delegates were joined by all the GOP officials running for election this cycle and other noteworthy GOP officials, and were treated to speeches by Supreme Court Justice Robert Young (who pointed out that he is being stalked by Democrats full-time, who are hoping to catch him getting sleepy so they can run ads about him being a sleepy judge too, although even if they don't get footage of him, they'll just hire an actor and outright lie again), your next Congressman from the 9th District in Michigan Rocky Raczkowski (who pointed out that he is a patriot and not a politician, donate to Rocky by clicking here), Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Michael Warren (who recited the Declaration of Independence for us all), Attorney-General candidate Mike Bishop (who again was solid), Secretary-of-State candidate Paul Scott (again impressive), and many others. These speeches were rousing and entertaining, and anyone who thinks 'all Republicans are boring big-government RINO's' should really take some time to listen to the real conservative Reagan Republicans who run from Michigan's Oakland County.

After the speeches, delegates broke up into sub-caucus groups according to their city. It was here that things got interesting for the delegates. Before the convention, for the first time in my experience, delegates were organized into two competing groups- traditional conservative Republicans and first-time Tea Partiers (big government Republicans, liberal Republicans, and moderate Republicans were generally excluded by both groups). Seizing the initiative and the rules, the Tea Party groups tried to control the proceedings and force their candidates to be chosen as the state delegates, and in some cases, they were very successful in doing so. They understood the rules of order and had considerable numbers, so it is quite understandable, but the process upset many delegates, especially long-time Republican supporters from Troy, Farmington Hills, and Rochester. One can only hope that the infighting in the GOP doesn't sap support for candidates up and down the ticket- this reporter thinks that it won't.

Oh, out of curiosity- will one of my readers email me and let me knowif the Democratic County Convention was similar? I'm curious if they say the pledge, have an invocation, recite the Declaration of Independence, have speeches about rule of law, freedom, liberty, and how to grow the economy like I saw at the GOP convention. Did they have debates about representation, the nature of government, the role of government in people's lives, life, liberty, property, etc? I'm guessing not but I'd really like to find out.

The next step for all delegates is to work hard to defeat liberals and Democrats up and down the ticket. Some delegates were chosen to go to the State Convention, and perhaps I'll pick up a guest pass and go myself and check it out.

UPDATE: Apparently the GOP State Confirmation Committee or something invalidated the state delegate lists that were submitted by several townships and cities, including Rochester, Rochester Hills, Troy and Waterford Township. While there is discussion of this being some sort of plot, it is fact because those lists were submitted improperly, with parliamentary procedure not followed and rules violated. Some of the lists that were submitted included delegates who were not elected as precinct delegates or who were not present at the county convention, and thus according to the rules (which were unchallenged at the convention), those lists should not have been accepted. While the Detroit News spends most of the article on discussions of plots and stuff, it really is just a simple matter that some people did not follow the right process when they voted in their groups to approve certain lists.

This issue should have been decided at the County Convention and thus a considerable amount of blame must be directed at the sub-caucus chairs of those townships and also at Glenn Clark, who oversaw a County Convention that was apparently run so poorly that a 'do-over' is needed. The convention ended at a decent time (11:00 pm)- other conventions ended later than that, so there was time to figure things out. It was confusion, laziness, and lack of leadership that led to this 'do-over', and now I'm going to have to read all these emails and stories about how it was some sort of plot by some group or something- how annoying!