Mostly, I'm disappointed and I left early.
The meeting began with a short speech by WI gubernatorial candidate Bill Ingram. Bill really didn't impress me much and seems like he's in favor of feeding class wars between the “criminally rich” and the “working poor”. He's also apparently on the “green environment” bandwagon.
Anyway, we moved to strategies for the various elections and the point that was driven home to me was the need for volunteers since Dems are bad and Repubs are good. It seemed that the best thing that the St. Croix GOP felt that they had going for them was that they were not the Dems.
They told stories of the things they “used to do” and offered explanations as to why we don't anymore, which were primarily attributed to lack of organization and volunteers.
They looked for ways to get the message out to young people who don't read newspapers and don't own land lines.
We pointed out to the group that people already know who the GOP is, and they're not interested in Party, but Issues. They need to clearly state their stance on the issues and then follow up that statement consistently with action.
Lots of people nodded their heads in agreement, but I don't think it had much effect.
Then, they moved to the vote on party resolutions. Evidently, the resolutions had been posted on the website, but the site was down and no one knew that they were there. They didn't have enough copies for everyone, so we had to listen to a guy who probably worked in the past as an auctioneer try to go through the resolutions that everyone was to vote on.
It was clear that everyone unanimously agreed on everything and nothing was going to be discussed or debated, so we decided to leave after about 15 minutes of that.
We did meet a nice couple who is working hard with the tea-party movement and are deeply involved with helping out. I believe that the man I spoke with had been invited to speak at the “take back the tea-party” in Eau Claire that is planned for this Sunday from 1-3PM (I intend to be there).
Anyway, that about sums it up... it was a very disappointing morning in Hudson, WI.