I should be working or studying right now, but all these government “bailouts” have me so riled up that I can’t be productive. I mean, does no one oppose the nationalization of our entire financial system? Where the hell is even the debate?! We’ve spent the last several years looking down our collective political noses at Hugo Chavez and Vladimir Putin, but the Fed bailouts of Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and now AIG dwarf anything even attempted by other modern socialist regimes. Oh, and isn’t it curious that Lehman Brothers isn’t able to get a deal made, but Merrill Lynch is? Maybe not so curious when you remember that our treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, is a former colleague of Merrill’s CEO!
Ok, before I get too carried away, here’s part 2 of the RNC Recap:
On Monday morning Toby and I attended breakfast with the Oklahoma Delegation. We were graced with a rather impressive speaking line-up. It included Utah governor, Jon Huntsman, the secretary of veterans’ affairs, the secretary of the interior, one of John McCain's prison mates in Hanoi, and one of McCain’s sons, Andy, among others.
After breakfast we headed over to see if we could get into the Campaign for Liberty’s Leadership Summit. It was an invitation only function, and we hadn’t been invited, but we thought we’d give it a shot. We brought Charles Key along with us for some extra clout. The volunteers at the registration table wouldn’t let us in, but we were able to bootleg some credentials from Kaye and Les to get in.
It turned out that it wasn’t really worth the trouble. The Leadership Summit was set up to unveil the Campaign for Liberty’s mission, vision, and organizational structure to select leaders from each state. When we entered, John Tate was laying out the goals and strategies that C4L plans to pursue. The problem was that he was constantly being interrupted with inane questions from the floor (which evidently is true to form for libertarian meetings according to Doug Wead).
There were about 600 people in the room with a couple of microphones from which to ask questions, all of which had lines of variously disaffected constituents. Some were peeved about the selection of state coordinators. Some thought the C4L wasn’t libertarian enough. Others wanted to remind everyone of how hard they’d worked, and that they didn’t want their existing organization to be forgotten.
If there’s one thing that bugs me to no end, it’s a bunch of self-centered blowhards needlessly dragging out a meeting with their petty complaints and juvenile questions. Maybe if they’d shut up for a few minutes and let the presentation go on, they’d get their answer without having to waste everyone else’s time! I have to commend John Tate for masterfully and graciously handling all the questions and comments.
The fact was that C4L wasn’t really ready yet to be launched at the time of the convention. The basic message was, “Here’s what we’re going for. You’re free to join us or not. Either way, we hope we’ll be able to work as allies when the time comes.” The Campaign for Liberty’s full launch is currently set for October 1st.
Since it didn’t seem like sticking around was going to be very productive, Toby and I headed back to the hotel, so he could take the shuttle to the first session of the Republican National Convention. Monday was originally scheduled to have an afternoon and an evening session, but the evening was canceled due to Hurricane Gustav.
I wasn’t able to attend the Monday afternoon session (I was taking Ellany and Taytem to meet some friends in Madison, WI, where they were staying the rest of the week), so I’ll have to leave it to Toby to give you the rundown. As far as I know, it just consisted of business matters, such as the committee reports, other than surprise appearances by Laura Bush and Cindy McCain. When I met everyone (the RP’ers) back at the hotel, they seemed pretty depressed. I understood why after I attended the RNC sessions on Wednesday and Thursday.
But Monday was not completely lost. After all we still had the Ron Paul Nation Celebration, the outdoor concert that served as the warm-up for Tuesday’s Rally for the Republic.
We arrived just as Mark Scibilia was ending his set. It was cool to see thousands of patriots from across the country gathered on a football field to celebrate Ron Paul and liberty. It was also our first chance to see our non-delegate Ron Paul comrades from Oklahoma.
Next up on stage was Aimee Allen, the internet sensation and writer/performer of the Ron Paul Revolution Theme Song, which she had to encore at the end of her set due to the crowd’s enthusiastic demands. After local country star Rockie Lynn performed, Ron Paul took the stage and charged up the crowd with his usual blend of common sense populism and principled, constitutional radicalism.
As we were packing up and leaving, several of us from Oklahoma were interviewed by an online news site called Gnooze. Here's the footage:
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