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I did something like that once in my younger, more naive days.
Went to the Republican presidential caucus in my state, and because I was the only one from my precinct who showed up, wound up a delegate to the county Republican convention. Here's what I learned:
1. The selection of delegates to the state convention was completely stacked. A card was handed out beforehand by the official country Republican party organization listing a "Republican unity slate" of delegates, and there was *no* debate on any of the delegates or any other literature indicating where any of the candidates for state delegates stood, if any of them were "liberal Republicans" and so on. The only opposition to the unity slate appeared to be from the Buchanan delegation. I had to ask one of them and was handed a list that the Buchananites had been surrepetitiously distributing of delegates they supported.
I wound up voting for the two or three delegate candidates who appeared on *neither* the Buchanan nor the "unity slate" lists. It was my little attempt at monkeywrenching the process, but it probably had zero effect.
Most of the county delegates dutifully voted for all of the "unity slate" candidates.
2. There was a "liberal Republican" candidate for governor running that year, against several hardboiled conservative Repukes in the primary. All of the candidates for governor spoke at the county convention. The one liberal in the race got a very lukewarm reception. The right wing whacko that most of the delegates apparently favored brought down the house. I had to excuse myself to go puke.
3. Antitax, sagebrush rebellion, anti-abortion, and militia nuts were all there with tables collecting signatures for ballot initiatives. I politely declined to sign any of them. There were a handful of delegates at the county convention wearing pro-militia t-shirts. Operation Rescue had a table. Somebody had a table selling garbage like the "Clinton Chronicles" video and Rush Limburger's books.
4. The whole time the only thought that kept popping in my mind was, "what am I doing here?"
Lesson learned: The Repukes party machinery is completely controlled by the right wing. This was sad, because this was in a state that just two or three decades ago had a strong tradition of moderate and liberal Republicans. If there were any other liberals at the convention, they were just as much in the closet about it as I was, and in any case I'd say our collective effect on the process was zero. Any hope I had that the old progressive Republican tradition of the Robert LaFollette, William Lemke, and George Norris era was still alive was completely squashed. There is one place for progressives today, and that is the Democratic Party.
But...if ya wanna try some creative infiltration and monkeywrenching of your own, knock yourself out.
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