Posted on 03/18/2012 8:57:01 AM PDT by mnehring
Police and organizers shut down proceedings at one of Missouri’s largest caucuses today, as Ron Paul supporters feuded with local GOP leaders.
“It’s like the Hatfields and the McCoys around here,” St. Charles County’s former GOP chairman told ABC News, after police arrived on-scene with a helicopter and removed Paul backers.
In St. Charles, an exurb of St. Louis and one of the state’s largest GOP counties, Paul supporters sought to elect their own chairman and adopt their own rules when proceedings opened — both of which are part of standard caucus rules and procedure. But as they argued with the caucus chair, Paul supporters held video cameras — against caucus rules, according to a GOP official who was there — and things became contentious.
“It turned into a little food fight within the caucus, between the caucus chairman trying to control the caucus and certain elements, I guess with Ron Paul, trying to be heard,” said Tom Kipers, a former chairman of the St. Charles GOP, who attended the caucus at Francis Howell North High School.
An off-duty police officer, hired as security, eventually filed a trespassing complaint against the Paul supporters and notified on-duty police in the area municipality of St. Peters, who, along with police from other jurisdictions, arrested two Paul supporters and ended the caucuses early. A joint-jurisdictional police helicopter arrived on the scene. Kipers said about 10 officers arrived in total.
“Two people were arrested for trespassing after receiving numerous warnings to leave the school property,” the St. Peters police said in a press release. “Both subjects were transported to St. Peters Justice Center where they were booked for Trespassing and released on a summons.”
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
I’m no Ron-bot, but that was wrong for the police to intervene like that.
Its Pauls crazy cult that makes him look like an idiot.. Not that he actually needs any help in that department primarily..
He was driving a funny-looking bright yellow car. It might have been a PT Cruiser. It had a big Ron Paul sign on the driver's side door. The driver was young. His hair looked odd. I don't think it was long, like a hippy's. I think it might have been a Mohawk, or something like that.
The reason I'm fuzzy on the type of car and the appearance of the driver is because I had to check the Ron Paul poster several times to make sure my eyes weren't deceiving me.
From some accounts I’ve been reading (even on some Paul websites), they deserved it. They were bullying everyone, shouting down people, pushing old people out of seats, preventing people from entering, and not following caucus rules like not videotaping. (some Paul sites are saying these things with pride).
They are no better than the Occutards.
If they were causing anarchy like this story reads they are lucky to not be in jail for months.
Agreed. Absent violence or property destruction the cops need to stay out of the political process.
I myself have shouted down a police captain at a neighborhood watch meeting when he came in to say that all the cop layoffs had not hurt the effectiveness of the dept. I told him to shut up and sit down, that he had no role in the process.
He did. Damn that felt good.
When I drove home I did so in PERFECT compliance with all traffic laws:)
http://occupy417.com/aggregator/sources/1
I hate to report this, but I travel Iowa, Illinois, and Nebraska for my job, and I can tell you there are a lot of Paul supporters and posters out there.
A lengthy comment by someone actually at the meeting:
THE GOP DID NOT WANT TO FOLLOW THE RULES…. CAMERAS SHOULD BE ALLOWED AT ANY PUBLIC VOTING PROCESS! Here is the REAL story. I shall first start off this report by saying that Bryan Spencer, the Saint Charles County Repulican Party Central Committe man who was tasked to organize the caucus told my fellow Ron Paul Coordinator here in Saint Charles at the last Saint Charles County Central Committe meeting, that ‘if the Ron Paul people come in and hijack the caucus, I will do everything in my power to throw out the entire delegation on a technicallity.’
This is exactly what happened, but first, let me clarify what Spencer means by ‘hijack’. There are no rules going into the caucus, aside from Robert’s Rules of Order. At the caucus, the temporary chairman opens the meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance and a prayer. Next, the temporary chairman opens the floor for nominations for a permanent chair in which the entire body of voters votes for. The newly elected chairman opens the floor to nominate a secretary. Then the chairman appoints a parlamentarian, the rules committe, and the credentials committee. The rules are voted on and then the body selects delegates to go to the Congressional District Convention and the State Convention.
So, the key is to organize your suppporters into ‘slates’, which are lists of names of the supporters who wish to be delegates. Ideally, you want to have your slates full, this way, all delegates that go to the conventions will be your candidate’s delgates. It is the process of a democratic republic. Organization is the key going into the caucus, and we had came prepared with the only complete slate of delegates. The Romney camp and Santorum camp had incomplete slates. We could have potentially have walked away with all of the 147 of the delegates.
So this is what Spencer means by ‘hijack’. There is no rule against having your stuff together and taking all of the delegates. It is the name of the game. We knew the GOP rules going in, and intended to follow them. We know that Spencer was encouraging the Santorum Coordinator to take all of the delegates if she had the numbers, so, it seems that he is okay with his guy getting the delegates, but not ours.
So, when we checked into the caucus, we were asked to vote in a straw poll for the candidate of our choice. Bryan Spencer’s claimed intent on this was to proportion the delegates by the votes from the straw poll, but I believe different. I believe that the GOP had a plan in case the Ron Paul supporters showed up with good numbers, and throwing out the delegation was it.
When it comes to a caucus, the body chooses the rules, not the GOP central committee. Before the temporary chairman (Eugene Dokes) opened the meeting, a set of rules was not proposed, but was made binding. One of the rules included was the ban on recording devices. I believe this ‘rule’ was put in for the reason of raising a ruckus. When that rule was read, it was very clear that everyone, not just Paul supporters, in that room opposed the rule. Boos ensued as well as Bryce Steinhoff, myself, Brent Stafford, and countless others tried making motions to overturn that rule and to put it up for a vote. Eugene ignored the motions, shouts of ‘point of order’, etc.
After around 20 minutes of deadlock and an eventual submission of the camera owner to turn it off, he opened the meeting by appointing a parlimentarian, appointing the credentials committee, and the rules committee, which are all appointments made by the PERMANENT chair whose has been elected by the body, not the temporary chair. He completly went around Robert’s Rules of Order. This is why the GOP did not want the process recorded. Again, they completly ignored parlimentary rule to usher in their chairman.
Next, Dokes opened the floor for nominations for the permanent chair, in complete opposite order than Robert’s Rule of Order states. At this time, the whole gynasium errupted in the call for Brent Stafford to be nominated, which Dokes ignored. Dokes then made his own nomination for chair and then called for a voice vote. The entire gymnasium erupted again with the call for ‘division’, which is the term that calls for a standing or ballot vote, which was utimately ignored by Dokes. Dokes’s voice vote result was that the “I’s” have it, which was clearly not the case. Dokes then motioned to close nominations, called for a voice vote, and nominations were closed without any recognition of motions from the floor. Then the new ‘permanent chair’ made a motion to adjourn the meeting, swung his gavel, and it was over.
No delegates were awarded.
Next, we tried to amass the people outside in the parking lot to have our own stump caucus to pick the delegates for the conventions. But the Saint Peters Police came over and arrested Brent Stafford for ”tresspassing”, as well as Kenny Suitter, the man with the camera.
I go back to what Bryan Spencer said to Bryce at the Central Committee meeting: ‘If the Ron Paul people try to ‘hijack’ the caucus, I will do everthing in my power to throw out the entire delegation.
‘Did Ron Paul have a majority in the room according to the straw poll at the door? Did the vote counters see this and feared the Ron Paul campaign would be able to elect their chair and walk away with all of the delegates? Did the sight of the Ron Paul Coordinators and the Romney Coordinators brokering a deal worry them that Santorum would not get any delegates?
I know for sure a few people on the Saint Charles GOP Cnetral Committee are Santorum supporters [... looks like the comment exceeded the length limit here]. ]And another comment:]
I was there. the description by RINO_NO_MO is 100% exactly accurate, but I will add the fact that the only reason the Romney crowd was not as vocal as the Paul crowd was that the Paul crowd had been told what kinds of tricks might be attempted to “move things along” with minimal actual vote counting. From the minute they denied Brent Stafford’s point of order, the RP camp saw the writing on the wall and started increasing the volume. The Romney camp didn’t show up expecting foul play, so it took them a little longer to realize the whole thing was being hijacked. But they put it together before too long, and by the time we were “invited” to go home or be arrested, the Romney crowd was starting to show some increased volume as well.
I would also like to admit that the RP group didn’t have a clear majority. They had a substantial minority. But the Romney crowd also had a substantial minority. Together we were definitely 2/3rds of the crowd. Between the two camps, we owned that meeting and the Santorum crowd (the leadership in the county) saw that we both supported the same chairperson (Brent is a totally fair guy, and the Romney crowd just wanted an honest vote). When they realized we had the numbers to to split the delegates between RP and Romney and leave them out entirely,they took their ball and went home like children at the playground.
As a side note, it didn’t look like there were any people in St Charles who cared much about Mr Gingrich. :)
Also, The picture up top was from last week’s “event” at the local university when Paul spoke. There were no Campaign signs like that at the Caucus.
---- end comments
It sound like the Santorum supporters were trying to shut down the Paul and Romney) supporters, and they didn't go meekly. Whatever you think of the candidates (and their supporters), this is symptomatic of what is really wrong with the GOP: various factions are trying to shut out the others, and the only thing that changes is what region it is happening in.
Rather than uniting against a common foe (Obama), they are tearing each other apart.
"The most important piece of information coming in that doesn’t appear to be an isolated event is the story that at a number of caucus sites, Mitt Romney’s delegates and Ron Paul’s delegates united on one delegate slate running against Rick Santorum’s slate of delegates. By combining their delegates onto one ticket, they also combined their voting blocks. From the small handful of results reported by ABC News, Ron Paul won in most of those precincts with Mitt Romney coming in a close second and Rick Santorum trailing a distant third."
Apparently, this is what was about to happen in the caucus where the arrests occurred. According to follow-up comments, the caucus was controlled by a Santorum supporter, and he shut it down with some parliamentary maneuvering to avoid it. Paul's supporters protested. Romney's supporters were reportedly protesting as well, but not as vociferously.
Not so sure about that - I’ve heard this same tactic used by them in 2008 in Nevada. They don’t take no for an answer, and won’t be civil - so what choice do you have. They can get just as obnoxious as the OWS idiots.
Why is it that Democrats have to have those government jobs? Oh, because that’s where the money is.
I still believe that Paul’s real choice is Obama.
I’m in the No RomObama camp. Not a Paul supporter. Here is the Key facts from that article:
Paul supporters sought to elect their own chairman and adopt their own rules when proceedings opened — both of which are part of standard caucus rules and procedure.
“... Paul supporters held video cameras...”
Cameras help to prevent fraud.
The Paul bots were following rules and the ones who were potentially going to be replaced and had reason to fear being replaced in a vote according to their own established rules did not want their actions recorded and seen....
Those of you knee-jerk attacking the Paul Bots here, please try to remember which country you’re trying to save....
Any constitutionalist they can't co-opt, they will destroy.
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