Saturday/Sunday Night Update – RNC Rules Update

Well, it has been a good but VERY long day. I’m quite tired, but wanted to update all of you faithful readers. My blog “viewers” have greatly increased over the last day or so, so I hope that means that all of you are sharing my posts with your friends and recommending my website to them. Thank you!

We got in safely yesterday evening, only to find out that due to the weather conditions, the RNC and Florida Governor Rick Scott had chosen to cancel Monday’s Convention schedule. I was on a conference call with Bill Harris, CEO of this Convention, and RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, who assured us that the call had to be made early and they wanted to avoid the possibility of even one accident, and the probability of hundreds of delegates having to stand outside in driving rain.

Now it seems that Isaac won’t hit Florida at all, but will make landfall in New Orleans. Prayers for Louisiana and Gov Jindal. We share the hotel we’re at with the Louisiana delegation, and I’ve gotten to know several of their delegates. They are wonderful people, and we pray the storm lessens significantly before hitting there (or anywhere).

We had dinner in dowtown Tampa last night, where we met the owner of The Colonnade. He is a fantastic Conservative who wanted to welcome us to Tampa and assure that he and his family did indeed build their small business from a small drive-in to one of the most successful seafood dining restaurants in the Tampa Bay area! Here’s a picture of the sign he posted outside the restaurant doors. While we chatted up the owner, the waitress came and told us that someone had paid our entire dinner bill, saying only that they were proud of me making delegate and of the work I was doing for Texas and America and to “keep it up!” Wow! To my mystery benefactor – thank you! The fried gator was delicious!

Even though today (Sunday) wasn’t an “official” convention day, there was a lot to do. Registration is going smoothly, handled by the ever talented and wonderful RPT staff, especially Chairman Munisteri and Deputy Executive Director Chris Elam. They deserve a round of applause – do it now…or whenever you see them next. Or both. 🙂

We are now loaded down with Convention “swag,” 4 shirts, a cowboy hat, ties, scarves, pins, and, of course – CREDENTIALS! (Yay!) I grabbed lunch with my dad and two other amazing people from CD 19 – Lance and Jane Cansino. Many of you will know Jane’s name because she is our SREC Committee woman for SD28 and the chairman of the RPT Candidate Resource Committee, which fundraises and donates money to the campaigns of our “down the ballot” candidates. She does an amazing job and it’s an honor to count her and Lance as dear friends. I’m glad to be in Tampa with them! Ran into all of the CD 19 delegates and alternates at one point or another today. Everyone is excited and ready to get to work!

Some of you probably remember I was supposed to have a CSPAN interview at 3pm today. We were able to make the connection for a couple of minutes, but because of the storms moving in, the website kept shutting down. We are going to try again for tomorrow’s two interviews, and hopefully they will work then! In other “media” news – my interview with KAMC was supposed to air in Lubbock and across the state this evening. If any of you saw it, I’d be very happy to hear from you how it went/looked/sounded!

We had an official Texas delegation meeting at 3:30pm, where we learned everything Chris Elam knew about Tuesday’s schedule and plans. Because of the new schedule, I will be unable to attend the Right-to-Life luncheon on Tuesday honoring Governor Perry, because there would be no time to get back to the hotel in time to make the bus to the Convention Center. Regardless, I am SO proud of Governor Perry and the others being honored – for their dedication to the rights of the unborn.

We heard today from Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (here’s a picture I snapped), and TX Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson. Both of them really fired us up and reminded us to do the work you sent us here to do, but also to cultivate strategies that will make sure we win back the White House and the U.S. Senate this November! Our delegation is strong, and we are a representation of how strong Texas is for Romney/Ryan 2012! In fact, a member of our delegation made this logo for us to show how excited we are! Feel free to use it on Twitter/FB/etc.

I was given the opportunity to address the entire Texas delegation this afternoon, and invite everyone to participate in the Texas Federation of Republican Women Scavenger Hunt. We have a lot of participants, and several of them are already scouring the hotel, securing business cards, taking pictures, and essentially networking with Texas and Louisiana delegates – which is the whole point of the Hunt. Remember to follow them on Twitter at: TFRWTeam1 – TFRWTeam12. I would like to take this second and thank Representative Charles Perry, Representative John Frullo, and Congressman Randy Neugebauer for donating prizes for this Hunt.

Lastly, we heard a report from our members of the RNC Permanent Rules Committee.  I have heard from many of you who are worried about the rules changes that 1) would allow the RNC to change the rules between conventions and 2) would allow presidential nominees to choose the delegates to the National Convention. Here’s what our committee members had to say on those points.

1) Although the original rule change stated that the RNC (entire, not voting/present) would have the ability to change rules in necessary cases between national conventions with only 2/3 support, our own RPT Vice-Chairman Melinda Fredricks proposed an amendment that changed that to 3/4 vote, and not within two years of a national convention. That is to say, the RNC cannot change the rules after September 30, 2014. This gives them a little leeway and flexibility in cases of emergency (where they should be able to come up with the 120+ votes), but not too much leeway so as to take advantage of a situation.

2) This one is VERY disturbing rule change. The original rule change stated that, if accepted, states would only be allowed to choose national delegates from a pool of “acceptable choices,” as determined by the presidential nominee. For incredibly obvious reasons, this is a very bad idea. A compromise was decided on, which I am still incredibly unhappy about, but is better than the first proposal. Both of our committee members signed a minority report, so it will be heard on the convention floor, but only if none of the 29 signers back off. The compromise is this: states will be able to choose their own national delegates, but the presidential nominees will be able to have, for all intents and purposes, veto power over delegates they don’t wish to be a part of the national delegation. From what I have been able to glean, most, if not all, of the entire Texas delegation will be voting against this, and I’ve heard from talking to other states’ delegates that they have been informed as to the change and are against it as well. I don’t know if we have a chance to beat this on the floor, but we sure are going to do our best! I’ll let y’all know how those votes go on Tuesday when we gavel in at 2pm.

I think that’ll do it for tonight – we’ll know more information about Tuesday after our delegation meeting tomorrow. Sen. Cornyn and soon-to-be Sen Ted Cruz will be speaking to us tomorrow – we’re sure to be pumped up by the time we’re done!

Hope all of you have a great night.

Thanks for all YOU’RE doing to further the fight where you are!

Always,

KVPTexas