I went to my District (aka BPOU) convention last night,

66B is deep in the heart of the urban beast; half of the district is in John Marty country, and the other half is in Saint Paul proper. Alice “the Phantom” Hausman is our “representative” in the House, with Ellen Anderson in the Senate. It’s one of the bluest places in Minnesota.

But last night, we drew a record number of delegates from the precinct caucuses. As I noted yesterday, some longtime Republicans were concerned about some of the tactics the Ron Paul campaign was talking about pulling to stack the delegates at the Fourth District convention next month. But energy is the last thing you want to stifle, especially when you’re drawing hordes of younger voters, which is a fairly rare thing at a GOP convention in a place like Saint Paul. Chad the Elder put it well:

Lots of people (many of them young and many of them Ron Paul backers) are getting actively involved in politics for the first time. We need their energy and their enthusiasm and we need to do our best to keep them involved. That’s why this reflexive urge by Republican regulars to mock and dismiss Paul supporters needs to stop.

Yes, some of them are a little too enthusiastic and can veer to the extremes at times. But that’s part of the package that you tend to get with youth. They’re passionate and they care deeply, two qualities in short supply in today’s GOP.

But there was little evidence of procedural shenanigans. One woman who appeared (verbally) to be a Paul supporter tried to amend the rules to allow unseated delegates to vote anyway – which failed. Note to the Paul supporters; your website listed all sorts of procedural maneuvers, but you need to learn how Robert’s Rules of Order work.

Still and all the district sent eight delegates; I think 1-2 of them were Paul supporters, and at least half were hardcore Republican activists.

Beyond that? The Resolutions voting had to dispose of a bunch of obvious Paulbot resolutions bubbling up from the caucuses, including one that called for “Bringing all the troops home from around the world right now”. Gratifyingly, even in the mixed room, it garnered not a single vote – although I did get to unleash one fun stemwinder in opposition anyway.

I’ve never been in a District 66B convention that was so much fun. I’m hoping the CD4 convention (to which I’m a third alternate delegate) is as energetic.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 8:33 am and is filed under Campaign '08, Minnesota Politics, Republicans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.