Posted on 03/10/2012 12:14:51 PM PST by Texas Fossil
On Wednesday, February 29th, an extraordinary emergency meeting of the State Republican Executive Committee was convened in Austin, TX. The purpose of the meeting was to consider adopting new rules in accordance with the San Antonio three-judge federal panel's instructions to propose a new way to pick delegates to the State Convention so as to allow for a May 29th or June 26th statewide primary date. As we previously reported, both the state Republican and Democratic parties reported to the Court that it would be impossible to comply with the current procedure for selecting delegates to state conventions and also to hold state conventions the first weekend of June. Both parties also told the Court that it was impossible to move the state conventions because of the necessity of lining up convention facilities and hotel rooms well in advance of the convention date.
The biggest problem facing both parties is the fact that precinct conventions (according to the Election Code) are to be held within five days of the primary election. Previous to yesterday's meeting, virtually all precinct conventions were held on the day of the primary election utilizing existing voter locations to hold caucuses. Since a primary needs to be held a couple of months before a state convention in order to have enough time to hold precinct conventions, county/district conventions and to allow for the process of credentialing, the scheduling of a May 29th primary made it impossible to hold precinct conventions at the same time as the primary. Consequently (and as reported previously), the State Republican Executive Committee, County Chairmen, and the RPT Officials Committee received input from Republican activists statewide and formulated a new plan to pick delegates.
The original plans were to move directly to county/district conventions without precinct conventions at all. This is the solution that the Texas Democratic Party has come up with and is the preferred solution for the majority of Republican county parties with whom we have consulted. However, since the Tarrant County and Travis County Republican Parties requested that an option be given to hold precinct conventions, the rules were modified to allow county party executive committees the option of attempting to hold precinct conventions in a manner to be determined by their executive committee. The original requirement was a 2/3 vote of the executive committee to approve this action, however, since Tarrant County GOP leadership wished to hold precinct conventions and have at least the option of holding them within their precinct as opposed to having all precincts at one location, as an accommodation to Tarrant County - the proposal was modified to reduce the requirement of 2/3 of the executive committee to 1/2. In the absence of executive committee action, county parties will proceed immediately to a county/district convention. Tarrant County leadership had requested that in the absence of executive committee action, that the default position be to move immediately to precinct conventions. However, since they were the only county out of 254 that requested this, the proposal was not changed. Nevertheless, Tarrant County does have the option (as do other counties) under the proposed rule of scheduling precinct conventions as they see fit.
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Chairman Steve Munisteri stated after the meeting, "I applaud the State Republican Executive Committee for the countless hours they have spent obtaining feedback from party activists and party leadership, and for thoroughly reviewing all possible options during the last two weeks. I am especially appreciative of the professional and civil tone of the debate concerning the rules, and for the unified and unanimous action of the SREC. These rules are by no means perfect. But they are in the opinion of myself and the SREC, the best of many bad alternatives. That is why I think it is very important that our Party be unified in moving forward to meet the unprecedented challenge our Party faces of preparing for the largest State Convention ever, in the shortest period of time, with a completely new set of untried rules.
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God Bless the United States of America. God Bless Texas.
May he protect and heal his people who go by his name.
>> May He protect and heal His people who go by His name.
Amen. We *need* His protection and guidance now more than ever.
If Texas doesn’t comply with these judges’ demand, what happens? Are its primary results not included in the national race?
Don’t know.
Fee, fie, foe, fum — I smell the flop sweat of terrified President.
BHO2 is trying to interfere in Texas’ Republican primary. He fears Gingrich more than any other potential candidate. Denying Gingrich the large number of Texas delegates by screwing with the primary and making it impossible, would result in a greater chance of BHO2 facing Romney as the Republican candidate come November.
Yep
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