The Mass GOP shoots itself in the foot AGAIN! Update: Scott Brown out!

We’ve got to stop being the stu­pid party.

Bobby Jin­del 2013

Sire you risk hav­ing no Spain at all

El Cid 1961

A few hours ago at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Nat­ick Mass where the GOP was poised to elect a chair­man, the Repub­li­can party man­aged to do some­thing so incred­i­ble that if you told me it was pos­si­ble at the begin­ning of the night I would not have believed you.

After open­ing speeches, nom­i­nat­ing speeches, and two excel­lent pre­sen­ta­tions by can­di­dates Rick Green and Kirsten Hughes the 80 mem­bers of the local party com­mit­tees took their vote, and this happened.

Yes you saw that right , the party actu­ally dis­al­lowed a bal­lot for Rick Green marked “RG” because of course the intent of the com­mit­tee mem­ber was to vote for the late World War 1 French Fighter Pilot Roland Gar­ros giv­ing Kirsten Hughes a 39 – 38 win with two absten­tion and one bal­lot disallowed.

And Yes, it took a com­mit­tee mem­ber mak­ing a pub­lic objec­tion for this men­dac­ity to be revealed to the out­rage of the assem­bled pub­lic (heav­ily sup­port­ing Greene) and the embar­rass­ment of that pub­lic rev­e­la­tion for said bal­lot to be counted and a 2^nd bal­lot to take place.

I com­mented thus

Believe it or not it got worse.

When the 2^nd bal­lot was com­pleted but before the votes was counted a motion was made to recon­sider the allow­ing of the RG bal­lot to the absolute aston­ish­ment of the audi­ence. It took some loud debate and audi­ence reac­tion for the gen­tle­man who pro­posed the recon­sid­er­ing of the ini­tial vote to with­draw it.

After the votes were counted the out­go­ing chair­man asked Rick Green to announce the results, which was a vic­tory for Kirsten Hughes. After very brief remarks Ms Hughes imme­di­ately moved for the adjourn­ment of the meet­ing while activist shouted for the vote total that was not announced. Even­tu­ally she announced the vote 41 – 39 Hughes. As the bal­lot­ing was secret we don’t know if it was just a ques­tion of the two abstain­ing mem­bers going Hughes or sev­eral votes changing.

While a lot of peo­ple I trust deeply have won­der­ful things to say about Chair­woman Hughes and she cer­tainly not only car­ried her­self gra­ciously to all she spoke to, but was kind enough to grant me what was likely her first on cam­era inter­view as GOP chair

the reac­tions of some of the activists present after the vote were bluntly not what you would want after this kind of event.

Oth­ers, while more con­cil­ia­tory still bode ill

The Democ­rats couldn’t have paid for a bet­ter result, Ms Hughes has her work cut out for her.

I’ll have the rest of the videos I shot up tomor­row morn­ing but I’ll leave you with this.

In Sep­tem­ber of 2010 in Wash­ing­ton DC I inter­viewed tea party activists at a huge rally at the Cap­i­tal and asked this ques­tion:

“Who here trusts the GOP?” Not a sin­gle hand went up

Now you know why.

Update: The remain­der of my videos:

Inter­view Pat Bar­ron just after my arrival:

Inter­view Marty Lamb before ini­tial vote

Pan of the Room before the event:

Vice chair­woman before votes

Kirsten Hughes nom­i­na­tion seconded:

Rick Green Nom­i­na­tion seconded:

two videos pending

Kirsten Hughes cam­paign speech

Rick Green cam­paign speech

Update 3: Can you say “Cause and Effect?

I was not at all cer­tain that a third Sen­ate cam­paign in less than four years, and the prospect of return­ing to a Con­gress even more par­ti­san than the one I left, was really the best way for me to con­tinue in pub­lic ser­vice at this time. And I know it’s not the only way for me to advance the ideals and causes that mat­ter most to me,” he said.

“That is why I am announc­ing today that I will not be a can­di­date for the United States Sen­ate in the upcom­ing spe­cial elec­tion,” Brown concluded.”

While I think this is the right move for Brown I won­der if the reac­tion to yesterday’s.…interesting GOP com­mit­tee elec­tion had any­thing to do with it?

BTW Appar­ently the NHGOP isn’t doing much bet­ter on that unity thing:

We have to divide the party in order to unite it (Jim Foley’s rant from the podium, and Wayne MacDOnald’s attack on blog­gers.)
We have to hide the vote count in order to prove we won (Both can­di­dates for chair­man were sworn to secrecy, and the del­e­gates were not informed of the actual votes – news trick­led out later)
We have to vote with­out a quo­rum to ensure the result is fair (Votes for area chairs were sud­denly called dur­ing lunch break)

and the Grok Peo­ple explain our function.