Posted on 04/13/2016 12:59:59 PM PDT by grumpa
These are our friends and fellow grassroots activists, Tea Party members and long-time Republicans, county chairs and first-time caucus attendees, young and old, very conservative and not-as-conservative, all gathered together to move our country forward, select senate candidates for the June primary election, and to elect delegates to the GOP National Convention, who will help to select our next president.
These are the Patriotic Americans that the Donald Trump Campaign compared to Nazis, using Gestapo tactics.
These are the delegates that Donald Trump totally ignored until a week before the convention.
This is the crowd who would have loved to hear a Trump speech, even if a majority were supporting his opponent, Senator Ted Cruz.
But Donald Trump couldn't be bothered to show up.
Instead, after he lost all of the Colorado delegates to Senator Ted Cruz, the Donald directed his staff and supporters to whine, and to make false accusations about a delegate selection process he didn't bother to understand, or choose to participate in.
This week, Trump was back in New York, among the people who share his values, complaining that the whole Colorado delegate selection process was a "totally corrupt rigged system" designed by the GOP establishment to prevent him from attaining his Trump-Given Right to be nominated for president.
Well, I've got some news for you Mr. Trump, and for all of the media and pundits who bought into your bogus narrative. It's going to backfire, big time.
You see, Colorado politics and the process of selecting candidates and delegates is all about showing up, starting at your local precinct caucus (held on March 1). It's a truly grassroots process, and it's been done that way for over 100 years.
Anyone, and I mean ANYONE, who is registered Republican, can show up and be part of a local precinct caucus. A precinct is the smallest political delineation for elections and holding party meetings. In an urban area it might encompass several blocks, basically your larger neighborhood. In rural Colorado it might include all or a large portion of a county. Typically, a precinct contains a few to several hundred GOP voters.
Anyone, and I mean ANYONE, can be selected by their fellow caucus attendees to be a delegate to their county and congressional district assemblies, and yes, even to the state GOP convention. Anyone. It was estimated that about 40 percent of the over 4,000 delegates and alternates at this year's convention were new to the process. Some of them drove six or more hours to get there, and stayed in motels at their own expense.
And here is the little-known fact that all the pundits and press have failed to report:
Anyone, and I mean ANYONE, who is a registered Republican, could have filled out a form and been listed as a delegate to the National GOP Convention. Anyone. You didn't even have to attend your caucus - the form was posted online at your state or county GOP website. On that form you had to designate either that you were supporting a particular candidate or were running as un-pledged. Most listed themselves as un-pledged.
That is precisely why there were over 600 national delegate candidates listed at the state convention, and about an equal number of candidates combined at the seven congressional district assemblies. Out of that thousand or so candidates, only 13 would be selected at the state convention, and 21 at the congressional assemblies (3 each), plus an equal number of alternate delegates, to go to the national convention in Cleveland. Add the Colorado GOP Chairman, and one man and one woman delegate to the RNC, and you have the total of 37 delegates frequently mentioned in the press.
Note that, only one, let me repeat that, ONLY ONE out of that 37 is part of the GOP establishment, the Colorado GOP Chairman, Steve House. All of the others were elected in a process that began with electing delegates to the state convention and the congressional district meetings at the local precinct caucuses. Delegates were also selected to attend county assemblies where candidates for local office, and the state legislature are selected through votes.
That is grassroots, baby. No other way to describe it.
Unless you are the Donald. Then you describe it as the party establishment disenfranchising potential Trump delegates. Give me a break.
If any potential Trump voters were "disenfranchised", it was because of the failure of the Trump Team to reach out and educate their supporters about the process of electing delegates. No one told them to show up. Or maybe there just aren't that many Trump supporters in Colorado. Out of 22 people at my own caucus, not one supported Trump.
However, somehow, all those Cruz supporters managed to figure things out. The grassroots activists know who the real conservative running for president is, and they came out to support him and all of the other patriotic candidates up and down the line in Colorado. That is the real story.
Oh, and here is a message for Mr. Trump. Maybe you hadn't heard, but Colorado is a critical swing state. This fall, just who do you think is going to be out there making phone calls for you, walking precincts for you, calling into radio shows, and donating money, if you get the GOP nomination? Maybe your admiring followers will be doing all that work for you - the same people who couldn't figure out the delegate process.
But, it sure ain't gonna be the tea party activists and the stalwart Republicans who put on the caucuses, who stepped up to be delegates, who drove hundreds of miles to attend the convention. Unless you forget, those are all the hardworking people who your campaign just likened to Nazis. Good luck with that.
What a dumbass loser you are Mr. Trump.
https://youtu.be/QpKAU60Wigs?t=105
This should be interesting.
Truth.
Why then is the Colorado legislature so embarassed they are returning to an actual primary?
As someone who was involved in CO politics in 2012, they are really tired of the DC GOP showing up every 4 years to ask for votes and never helping with the Boulder power grab.
Boulder has been grabbing much of the Front Range politics.
Gun control, Fracking, Green Agenda...
All being pushed in conservative Front Range towns.
As a Trump supporter, I understand what they are fighting.
link?
65K Coloradans voted--they just voted against Trump. That's 11 elections in a row we've won.
#WhiningIsntWinning https://t.co/m0NrRh5mFu— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) April 11, 2016
Under regulations established in the 1980s, delegates cannot take money from corporations, labor unions, federal contractors or foreign nationals. But an individual donor is permitted to give a delegate unlimited sums to support his or her efforts to get selected to go to the convention, including money to defray the costs of travel and lodging.
And, maybe, just maybe, Trump is smarter than he is given credit for. How do we know he didn’t just allow this to happen to out the dirty campaign tricks of Cruz? Or should I say - to add to the list? The whole country is in an uproar over this event, and it makes Ted look like the scum that he is.
Highly doubting more than a couple thousand voiced their vote.
The stupid fools must want to lose. Colorado has over a million Independent voters, thats more than the registered CO Republicans. These would be crossover voters in the GE for Trump. Trump could win Colorado in the GE as opposed to Cruz with his little cadre of bullwhipped pledges.
As of April 1, 2016, there were 957,266 registered Republicans in the state of Colorado. Now we have around 920,000+ people disenfranchised from their voice and vote. Gloat all you want with as a stolen victory now. In November their is no way in hell that Cruz would win Colorado:::Many of the Colorado’s million Independent voters, would love to support Trump.
Way to go GOP Republicans, Shame on Colorado!
I guess it’s time to re-tally the who voted for Cruz in relation to the population. It gets more embarrassing each time he wins and % shrinks deeper into single digits. He’s good at manipulating back room deal caucuses in low turnout states. He’s the exact opposite of what we need to win the real election in November.
http://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/elections/VoterRegNumbers/2016/March/VotersByPartyStatus.pdf
There was no presidential caucus in Colorado.
Be easy on the boy----the buzz is he's mentally unbalanced. He hears voices telling him "you won, Teddy," usually heard when he just took a licking at the polls. That's when he makes his victory speech.
Cruz saying: “65,000 people voted in the state of Colorado. They didn’t vote for you Donald Trump. They voted for our campaign.".... is Cruz's fave ploy-----labeling votes he received (or stole) as anti-Trump-votes. But Cruz never applies Trump's voluminous vote-getting as being against him.
Trump is winning by staggering numbers....that means Cruz lost by staggering numbers.....many many more rejected Cruz than they did Trump.
Does this look like Trump was rejected?
Trump.....8,256,309.... 37.0 1%....758 delegates
Cruz......6,319,244....28.33%.....533 (plus all he can steal)
Cruz keeps losing and losing. About time he gets medical help, bows out gracefully, and admits he lost.
As a disabled veteran and a Colorado Republican, I cannot just show up at the local precinct. I was given no say or input (vote), nor anyway to voice my opinion.
Grumpa, you sound like an elitist know it all. I hope you live long enough for your fellow elitist to tell you they don’t give a damn about your opinion. Just like my fellow Colorado Republicans have done to me.
They go on and on about how wonderful of a system it is - but that system totally discourages voter participation and representation. If you don’t believe that, then why does it attract a fraction of what a primary attracts (closed or open)? It’s a stupid, tilted system that needs to be phased out. Anyone who thinks that the anti-Trump forces didn’t game the system in Colorado is being dishonest. That’s why there’s such an outcry about it. It was unfair and unrepresentational of the overall Republican voters in Colorado.
Since you so want to have a revolution of the vein of the French, tell me who are the first people you are going to behead? Priebus? Mcconnell? Paul? Lee? who? People who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. I don’t know about the revolt of 1381, but I know about the French Revolution. Our founding fathers wanted nothing to do with it for a reason, I want nothing to do with anything like it either for the same reason.
> “These are our friends and fellow grassroots activists, Tea Party members and long-time Republicans, county chairs and first-time caucus attendees, young and old, very conservative and not-as-conservative, all gathered together to move our country forward, select senate candidates for the June primary election, and to elect delegates to the GOP National Convention, who will help to select our next president.”
The same could be said about good Germans in the 1930s, not Nazis, just everyday German working stiffs.
> “These are the Patriotic Americans that the Donald Trump Campaign compared to Nazis, using Gestapo tactics.”
Yes, indeed such tactics are being used similarly to those used in the 1930s. Inserting delegates into Trump slots leaving out those that did not hold their view. Yep, it’s the same human behavior.
The Cruz people are actively shutting out Trump delegates and installing their own into Trump slots that Trump won.
But it won’t matter. People that do this sort of thing will get a payback. Trump’s people will take over the GOP apparatus and controls, and those that thought they were clever now will be hurting in the future. They can always join the democrats which is where they belong.
Think in a bigger picture.
People should never get stuck staring at one tree until they are so cross-eyed they think the fuzzy thing they see is the whole forest.
Part of the bigger picture;
FULL Interview: Donald Trump & Family at CNN Town Hall, Anderson Cooper, April 12, 2016
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3420377/posts
Great interview with Paul Manafort;
Trump’s convention manager on abuse of delegate process
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yqx3Zf-sOI8
You got that right.
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