doing my part

So, as some of you know, I am a die-hard Ron Paul supporter. On March 11, I was chosen as an alternate at our precinct convention. On March 29, I was seated as a delegate for our Senatorial District (SD) convention and was nominated/accepted as an alternate for the Republican State Convention in June. It was an AMAZING experience and I am so friggin' proud of myself! I would do a play-by-play but thought I'd just post commentary from other sources (see links to read in full) b/c they pretty much sum it up. So....let's begin:

HEADLINE: Ron Paul supporters won control of Travis County’s state Senate District 25 GOP convention on Saturday (link)Posted March 29th, 2008 by soule
By W. Gardner Selby Saturday, March 29, 2008, 02:37 PM

• Ron Paul supporters won control of Travis County’s state Senate District 25 GOP convention on Saturday, but fell short at the county’s SD 14 convention.
• Rosemary Edwards, chairman-elect of the Travis County Republicans, said: “There are some new legs in the game. That’s grass-roots democracy at its best… It’s actually moving along fairly smoothly.”
• In the SD 25 meeting, the temporary chair who had hoped to be elected the permanent chair of the confab was defeated by a challenger backing U.S. Rep. Paul, R-Lake Jackson, for president. In turn, delegates elected Paul-majority committees to guide them through sorting resolutions and selecting delegates to the state convention in June.
• Robert McDonald, an Austin CPA elected the permanent chair of the county’s GOP SD 25 convention, said he won the post by about 17 votes—after which some of what he called the old guard walked out, including the temporary chairman, Brian Padden.
• McDonald said a goal of the Paul delegates is to stress certain issues, such as the economy, in the party platform. .

HEADLINE: Ron Paul supporters set sights on influencing Texas GOPPaul backers won control of GOP confabs in Austin, Victoria. (link) [ok, I'm going to post the entire article; too good to pass up]

Want a fresh political surprise?

How about supporters of U.S. Rep. Ron Paul for president staking alasting claim in the Republican Party of Texas?

As Democrats tussled over their presidential candidates at recent regional conventions, Paul backers unexpectedly took control of a GOP convention in Austin and the Victoria County convention.

The results at Travis County's state Senate District 25 convention left old-guard Republicans wondering who lost the party's car keys --and worse.

Gail Suttle, active in GOP circles since the 1980s, watched the takeover in horror. Suttle e-mailed Republicans afterward: "This group is NOT Republican and they will not work together -- remember this when you do have to be in contact with them."

At the confab at a local middle school, she'd likened the Paulies to Hitler youth, saying they were to the right of Attila the Hun.

"I am sorry," her subsequent e-mail says, "but I meant it all!"

The victors let Suttle slide; they even named her a delegate to the party's June state convention in Houston.

Most know, too, that they're not likely to vault Paul, of Lake Jackson, into contention for president. Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona,won the March 4 Texas primary. He remains the party's presumptive nominee.

But the activists harbor long-term hopes. They want the GOP to re-commit to chestnut tenets such as slimmed government, lower taxes and respect for privacy. And a hope is that sooner or later, grass-roots Republicans will accept the Paul partisans as energetic compatriots rather than rating them moon-beamish interlopers from the Libertarian Party. Paul was the Libertarians' 1988 presidential nominee.

"The whole point is to stretch the definition of a Republican, really try to get it back in a direction where it came from," said RobertMcDonald, an Austin accountant.

McDonald, 46, a Houston native and father of four, was elected the district convention's permanent chairman by a vote of 110-94.

His rise capped months of door-to-door canvassing in South Central Austin neighborhoods in the San Antonio-rooted Senate district.

Street by street, Paul supporters identified independent-minded voters willing to come to the precinct caucuses on primary night. McDonald said the canvassers looked for Paul yard signs and independent-oriented bumper stickers, even marijuana-leaf stickers--"anything indicating that person is a freedom-minded person."

Caucusing voters then elected delegates to the district convention.People aligned with Paul's beliefs landed 32 of the convention's 36delegate slots for the state convention.

Delegates also whacked at typical Republican positions.

They voted in favor of deleting language in the state party's platform dealing with family matters such as a call for a federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. They said the U.S. Supreme Court should leave abortion rights to individual states; the state platform calls for a constitutional ban on abortion.

"Abortion is not an issue that affects most people in this country,"McDonald said. "Foreign policy, the economy, personal freedoms affect everybody. ... Those are the things we need to concentrate on."

Delegates approved a resolution honoring Gov. Rick Perry. They scuttled a commendation of President Bush."A lot of people feel like he's let his party and his country down,"McDonald said.

Many ideas celebrated at the Austin convention could wither at the state convention.It might be, too, that Paul's "freedom fighters" lose interest in the party after the intensity of this election year.

Yet Suttle and McDonald independently compared the district convention to the rise of Christian conservatives through GOP ranks in the late1980s. That surge, a component of Bush's success, helped win elections.

Springsteen wrote it: "From small things, mama, big things one day come."

Word.