Report from the Minnesota State Convention

I think the Minnesota State Convention had the best possible outcome.
I’m happy about it and excited about the future of the MN Republican Party.

Here is how I got there:

We had no venue for Ron Paul to speak since the MN GOP wouldn’t allow him to speak at the convention and everyone was concerned because the forecast was rain for when Ron Paul was scheduled to speak at 7:30am. In the morning just before he spoke, the rain stopped, the clouds parted, the sun came out, the temperature was perfect, the birds started chirping loudly, and it was an absolutely beautiful brisk Minnesota morning outside when he spoke.

There were about 400 to 500 people outside at 7:30am listening to him speaking and probably 90% of them were to be in the convention when it started. The 45 minute speech was excellent. It was a perfect outcome in my opinion considering they GOP did not let Ron Paul speak inside the convention, which totally worked out to our benefit in the end. Another venue had been booked for Ron Paul nearby by campaign staff the evening before but the venue backed out. It is rumored that the GOP pulled some strings and pressured the venue owner to back out of the deal. Only a few people know the truth about that…

Once we got inside the convention at about 8:30, there were already signs hung all over the place and literature distributed on every floor chair. Two of these pieces of papers were horrendous hit pieces against Ron Paul saying things such as he wants to legalize cocaine, heroine, and prostitution. They were completely filled with text saying half-truths, straight up lies, and quotations that were way out of context.

There are apparently convention rules about distributing literature and there has to be the name of the person or group that is distributing it printed on it because someone objected and called out the specific section in the rules. The literature needed to be somewhat pre-approved and early entry had to be arranged with convention coordinators. The rules state something along the line that unauthorized literature that broke these rules is to be confiscated from the floor, discarded and the person(s) that is responsible for it is to be removed from the convention.

People were getting very angry, kept objecting and were trying to get the convention to follow the rules and have the sergeant-at-arms remove the literature and remove the people responsible. They dragged their feet forever and picked up probably 60% of the literature. Mysteriously, nobody knew who distributed the literature. These were fluorescent yellow and orange pieces of paper, by far the most visible of all the literature. Let me see, a person(s) literally had 20+ lbs of paper and distributed it to 1000+ chairs…. but yeah, it was Professor Plum in the library with the candlestick, and he couldn’t be found to be removed.

All the literature except the hit pieces on Ron Paul were national delegate candidate’s or slate literature. Of course, the majority of these people who were distributing the candidate literature had no idea that they were not even going to have an opportunity to be voted for since the establishment had stealthily changed the rules to “no nominations from the floor”. These people spent a lot of money and time to be tricked by the party and not all of these were Ron Paul supporters. There were a lot of very angry people who were being vocal about it.

The convention had many rules about signage. The establishment’s slate had (2) humongous fabric banners at each end of the stage, and many other signs that exceeded the size and quantity parameters violating the convention signage rules. The large banners were hung the day before the convention in violation of the rules also. Many people made objections and tried to get them removed as stated in the rules but nothing became of it.

The nominating committee had rules that the candidates for national delegates and alternates had to appear before them prior to convention and fill out forms and pass all their subjective tests that are impossible to prove such as being “honest person” or a “good” republican. Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Sen. Norm Coleman did not appear before the nominating committee as stated in the requirements to be considered which by the rules makes them ineligible to be considered for national delegate or alternate. But hey, who wants to follow the rules if they do not work in your favor? I expected no less, truly.

One person got on the microphone and stated that who ever came up with the establishment slate’s huge banners and must have been psychic because it almost completely matched the nominating committee’s final results and wanted an explanation of that having a high probability. The place roared. A majority of the crowd (the sheeple) did not understand the irony of them cheering for this, but yet they cheered like fools due to group-think. The leadership looked like fools.

During this convention, people who were not involved with Ron Paul were becoming disgusted by the leadership’s behavior and booed them several times. Even opponents of Ron Paul were apologetic to the Ron Paul supporters because the treatment we received. I heard this over and over and over walking the corridors and I had over 20 apologies from persons that you could more then likely call neo-cons through the course of the weekend.

I was seeing conversion after conversion and awakening after awakening. It was a beautiful thing. The party lost a lot of respect from a lot of people who were not Ron Paul supporters. Ron Paul and Ron Paul supporters gained much respect and many members during the convention. They just made taking the Minnesota Republican Party over 10 times easier because we now have a lot of old-timer’s backing as many of them truly seemed to admire what we did.

We conducted ourselves in an excellent manner, followed all the rules, made valid thought provoking points, and showed the convention attendees that there is not ANY unity in the MN Republican Party at the moment and it is because the leadership is inept and is not interested in growing the MN Republican Party.

That was THE best possible outcome at this point in the presidential election for the state of Minnesota, if you live in reality. You really think they are going to let him speak at the national convention when they won’t even let him on to a floor of a state convention? Let’s be real here, we just cured our foundation here. It’s time to build now, and we plan on building with bricks for the long term.

The beautiful thing about all of this is that we probably just got 1.5 times stronger here in MN and definitely got some major financial backing for our upcoming Ron Paul Republicans! Not to mention the existing network just got hardened. Also, everyone knew that the Ron Paul hotel parties were the parties to be at, and they came. They were neo-con conversion clinics and they stayed hard at work until the wee hours of the night churning out new supporters.

Big thanks to the MN GOP for helping us grow considerably during the convention. I had old timers walking up to me giving me contact information for donations for our Ron Paul Republican candidates. Enjoy your positions today MN GOP, for you will not have them next time around.

If they could figure out that this is not about Ron Paul…

Thanks to PlzPeopleWakeUp, Senior Member at RonPaulForums for the report.

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