The point would be to pack these conventions with the pitchfork crowd, and I should think we have a chance of doing that this year, if there was but a promotional push to do so, some BUZZ to do so, but it seems to me that throwing in the towel before 1144 and after, is being broadly accepted.
Tea Party must become delegates locally, at county and state to hope to shut down “open” primaries at least.
Whadaya think?
As for your plan for taking over the Party from the county up (I know all about this because this was MY plan, back in 2008) - I am not hopeful.
First of all, if it was as easily done as people seem to think it would be, it already would have been. If the way was clear for Tea Partiers and other angry conservatives to simply march into their county conventions and take over, then moving up to state, and then to national, they would have already done so, especially given how fired up everybody was in 2010.
The problem is, it's simply not a matter of getting a bunch of ticked-off people together and showing up.
Let me digress for a moment by making a few observations about what we, in a general sense, tend to refer to as the "GOP-E."
The GOP-E is generally made up of people who are political "players," people who, for better or for worse, know the ins and outs of the political game. They may be elected officials, or they may just be Party officials, all the way down to the precinct and county chairs. As a result, they know the tricks to use, the obscure rules to invoke, etc. to keep things going the way they want them to. Most of them are RINOs because they feel they have to compromise to play the game successfully.
How many average Joes know Robert's Rules of Order? Chances are very few do. So right there, your scads of people will have no clue how to even do anything at a county convention, because the GOP-E chairman or designated moderator will be invoking strict RRoR left and right against anybody who gets out of line. If they don't like a resolution to be presented, it can be squashed every way from being ruled "out of order" at will to being tossed on a technicality to the person wishing to present the resolution simply not being called on, ever, if the leadership gets a hint of what they're trying to do.
I've even seen it where a sitting RINO precinct chair who wanted to pass the baton to her hand-picked RINO successor did this: after the convention broke up into precinct meetings, she called for nominations to fill the precinct chair for the next two-year term. She had a pre-picked person nominate the hand-picked successor right off the bat, and then she immediately closed nominations. I mean immediately as in "20 milliseconds after the hand-picked successor's name was spoken." Guess who got to be the new precinct chair, despite grumbling from everyone else?
When people like me talk about the GOP-E and how it's able to manipulate the process within the GOP, stuff like this is what I'm talking about, from the county level all the way up to the inner echelons of the national Party. If they don't want changes made, then the rules get made or changed to prevent these reforms from taking place. It's easy to say, "Well, we'll just replace these people." It's a lot harder to actually do it, even if you have numbers on your side. The GOP-E really and truly IS an entrenched, power-grubbing cadre of political players who are not about to let a bunch of upstarts turn their apple cart over.
That's why if you show up to a county convention with a bunch of ticked off pitchfork-wavers, all that's going to happen is that you will leave the convention with even-angrier pitchfork wavers.
That's why all these folks who say, "Well, let's vote for Romney, but we're going to take the GOP over!!!" are naive. No they're not. Not going to happen.
Some of them are trying and Ron Paul’s people are doing what you’re suggesting in a very organized fashion. Ron Paul had 50 delegates on the ballots in PA where it’s a direct election, but only 5 got voted in out of 59 slots. The GOP party hacks are there at the polls telling the voters which are the “approved” delegates. And the voters have no spirit of rebellion, or they would be voting AGAINST those approved delegates. I don’t see how you change the voters’ minds without a ton of money to spend on advertising, unless some genius has a low-cost marketing plan.