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political conventions
By Riverboat in Flotsam and Jetsam
March 30, 2008
There are a lot of things I’d rather be doing on a Saturday morning, but I elected to attend the Victoria County Republican convention. Why not? It’s not far from here, and I’ll have a front-row seat at America’s greatest spectator sports- democracy in action.
 
The weather is blustery but cool enough to wear a dress shirt and tie. I chose a long-sleeved red cotton shirt and a Tabasco tie. If Texas is a red state, I may as well dress the part. The meeting is held in a historical building downtown – the Old Cigar Factory. I like the political incorrectness of the name, and the antique charm of the building itself. But on a day like this, one must bow to modern innovations like air conditioning. At the very least, someone ought to know where the damned thermostat is, and how to turn it on.
 
Upon arrival, I write my name with a Sharpie on a sticky-tag and pick up a list of resolutions. I peruse the list as I sit in one of the few seats available. The resolutions are acceptable. Yet, I can’t help noticing that in there is an elephant in a roomful of elephants. Amid the list of recommendations and exhortations, there is no mention whatsoever of the war in Iraq. Are we for it or against it? How long should we stay? How much more money and lives are we willing to commit to that troubled region? Are we going to follow the lead of our representative Ron Paul who vociferously opposes it, or the presidential nominee John McCain who is determined to stay as long as deemed necessary?
 
One of the delegates seems a little out of place. She’s dressed for the national convention, or the queen of the Fourth of July pageant at the Retama Nursing Home. She’s wearing a blouse and hat of blue and white sequins. Unfortunately, her contribution is not limited to her colorful outfit, but her colorful and sporadic outbursts.
 
There’s always a squabble over some ancillary point of order that eats up 15 minutes of a meeting full of people with strong opinions. On this occasion, an uprising of Young Turks consumes a full two hours over who gets to be the permanent chairman of the meeting. After a flurry of motions, seconds and whereases, a meeting area that was expecting twenty delegates becomes a hotbed of delegates caucusing with their precinct members to cast secret ballots for who gets to be King of the Fire-Ant Hill.
 
That’s it. Two contentious hours were consumed with who got to run that meeting. Well, as one delegate was overheard, it was a shot across the bow. I wasn’t unsympathetic toward the uprising. The county has been lacking conservative leadership, but why squabble over who gets to run a meeting? The Turks should have conserved their firepower over who gets to run the county for the next two years.
 
BY 12:30, the ceiling fans are turning faster, and – mirabile dictum – someone found the thermostat. Looks like I can keep my shirt on after all.