A spy in the G.O.P.

Last night I went to the Republican caucus in Boulder county, Colorado. I've stayed Republican for the last few years mainly so I could vote in this year’s primaries, a decision I regretted as I headed towards the Chamber of Boredom.

I walked up at 7 p.m. for the 7 p.m. start time, and groaning at the 7 to 9 p.m. sign out front, but apparently I was supposed to show up early for registration. I walked up to the table and the lady said she had already closed the envelope for my precinct...which, though true, didn't mean the envelope was sealed, and she was nice enough to let me register anyway instead of having to stay late to do it. This relieved me as I had no intention of staying for the whole caucus. So I filled out my name, address, phone number (holy crap was that done with a heavy heart, though I can't wait to tell the first G.O.P. caller this year that if they don't stop calling me, I'm voting for Barack Obama), then my voter number. Oh, that's odd. What's my voter number? No problem, she said, it's on this sheet, though the A-K printout actually ended at F. I think I was supposed to take care of it afterwards. I had no motivation to, as she also gave me the official "vote for president" card, which was all I came for. I immediately circled Mitt Romney and walked into the high school auditorium.

Lots of people were gathered by the door, but I figured I could just take a seat on the wings...the room, however, was pretty full, and I took a seat in the penultimate row in the back right. After a not-so-quick rundown of the rules, each candidate could have two people speak for him. The six speakers went in random order: but it was two each for Newt, Paul, and Romney, and none at all for Santorum. Ron Paul's supporters boiled down, of course, to "Our guy's a real candidate, I swear." The Newt Gingrich people, again, expectedly, scared the living crap out of me: one said he wanted not a Boy Scout in Chief, but a Commander in Chief. Guess the G.O.P. isn't even going to pretend to be the family values party anymore, I noted dutifully. The other said the Founders went against the British without accepting the likely calculated outcome; we should do the same and vote for Newt. He talked about Newt going against a vague group of enemies he counted as the "most demonic" in American history. I think he meant The Big O's administration, but demonic? Really? We want a guy, he argued, with the "horsepower between the ears" to stand against Obama. I assume the horsepower comment was not a direct quote from the West Georgia tenure committee.

The Mitt supporters were a little different. The first, like the other four, was a male, and he spoke to Mitt's successful experience turning around a corrupt Olympic host and his success in other business ventures, like at investment firms named for Batman villains. He also said Romney would restore dignity to the White House, (wait a beat), which has been missing for the last three years. I honestly don’t know what he meant. The second was a woman, who started off by saying that she had known Romney since 1985 and that we might not know that Romney, in 1995, along with Utah senator Orrin Hatch, had...and at this point, I immediately filled in her backstory for myself, that clearly she was Mormon, and Romney had been her stake president, and that he is, in fact, a good man, right? But she talked about how Romney and the senator had helped her adopt her kid from China. Then she said she wanted to speak to what she called Romney's diversification, and that people expect him to be Mormon-centric, but that he and Hatch, both Mormon, had gone out of their way to help her, even though she's Jewish. And then she said she helped on the Salt Lake Olympic Committee when Romney asked, and how she felt she had to after all he'd done for her family. And, oh yeah, at the end, just as an aside, she mentioned when her mother was dying right before her daughter was born in China, Mitt Romney flew them out there. Okay, that was just awesome. The coolest, most personal moment of the night.

We broke up into precincts and, after we picked some precinct officials, tallied our presidential votes. I was pleased when Romney won (12 to Gingrich’s 6 to Santorum’s 9 to Paul’s 2), then later carried the whole school. We then picked some more volunteers/election judges/paying delegates, etc., in a drawn-out war of attrition.

Finally, we closed with my favorite part of any caucus...the resolutions! Thankfully, I got my hands on a printed copy this time. They were a little less nutty, but still pretty fun. Such as:

Resolution 1:

Whereas Obamacare represents the most ambitious overreach ever of the government into the lives of ordinary citizens, and

-actually, let's just stop there. Drop the ever. And most ambitious overreach? Beats Prohibition? Slavery? Or is citizens our weasel word of the day? Anyway, it ended with the idea that Obamacare must be repealed...if there's anything we need to make sure the GOP emphasizes more, it's Obamacare.

Resolution 3, which ends:

Be it resolved that the Boulder County Republicans Support an Amendment to the Constitution which requires that the budget be balanced annually such that a deficit budget cannot be approved; Secondly, we believe that the deficit should be addressed by spending reductions rather than by tax increases, and a three-fifths supermajority vote of both Houses of Congress be required for any tax increases.

The balanced budget thing sounds awesome unless you ever accidentally crack open a freshman Econ textbook; I was one of few in my precinct to have made this mistake. Secondly, I get it, you think the government is too big, quit beating me over the head with it, and third, taxes are some special law that require a more onerous burden to change in one direction but not the other? Brilliant.

Res. 4, ban bailouts, should've run that one by W.;

Res. 5 on voter ID:

Whereas Photo Identification is not required in the State of Colorado for any registered voter; and
Whereas producing a photo ID is a normal act in everyday commerce; and

...wait, where are you guys shopping that you have to show a photo ID to buy stuff? I have no real reason to be against this, other than I'm not sure what it's code for; it's just that, on my numbered list of political priorities, this occupies the spot right next to Avogadro's number.

Res. 8 and 9 were awfully similar, both on Second Amendment rights, and equally annoying as I don’t care for guns; however, I loved 8's line:

Whereas an armed citizenry correlates generally with low crime rates; therefore

because it sounded oh-so-scientific.

Then we got the last two, which weren't prescreened and therefore weren't printed. The first involved being pro-life, which is fine with me but sort of random, and the second was about United Nations Agenda 21, which was referred to as socialistic and communistic and discussed in terms of extreme environmentalism and as a threat to national sovereignty, but which I was the only precinct member (a precinct in which 29 voted for a presidential candidate) to vote against as fear tactics get old after a while. The U.N.’s gonna make us change? Aren’t we their Enforcement Division?

Then I came home and saw how well the comeback kid, Rick Santorum, is doing, and frankly, it pissed me off. I think most Mormons have an overdeveloped persecution complex, but in this case I think it fits. Other than not wanting to vote for a Mormon, why would anyone support Sanitarium over Governor Romney?  He was that memorable in his Senate terms? Is it his wealth of private sector experience? Give me a friggin' break. I know the G.O.P. is not the party of tolerance, but it still infuriates me. And it came as a surprise, too, except in Missouri, where Santorum surged after endorsing Governor Boggs' re-election campaign.

Earlier in the night, in an effort to rouse volunteers, one of the women in charge told us if we're okay with Obama, to go ahead and sit on our thumbs. If Santorum's the candidate?

Gladly.