Oops, ....... I think I broke my Caucus

You know there is just something funny about the word caucus. In an elementary school age type funny sort of way. They had the Republican caucus at a middle school just about 1/2 mile from our house. This is the first time I have been to a caucus, there were about 45 other people that showed up from my precinct which was basically made up of my subdivision plus a little bit more. The person who had supposedly been trained by the party walked in and handed out the delegate forms to whoever raised a hand. There were ten delegate forms, this is significant I found out later. At first I was just kinda excited to be there. We voted for a group leader for our precinct and he opened our packet and started reading the instructions. It turns out that in our state the way the Republicans choose their Presidential candidate is that you get together with your precinct and pick your delegates. The delegates are the ones who go on and actually vote. So ideally you would want to be a delegate, at least if you want your vote to count anyway. So whoever wants to be a delegate stands up and tells the group why they should be a delegate and who they are looking to vote for. Then as a voter I vote for the person I think will go on and vote for the person I would have voted for. Are you a little confused now, I was. So after our group leader read the instructions and we realized we were supposed to vote for our delegates, who had since already filled out the forms that weren't supposed to be handed out until the delegates had been chosen, our group leader looks around and says anybody else want to be a delegate? Nobody raised their hands so it was all decided. Way to go democratic process! I have no idea who the delegates that represent my precinct will actually vote for. We then had our little vote that really wasn't a vote because it didn't really count for anything because unless you are chosen and are willing to pay the $35 fee and travel your vote doesn't matter. So in our precinct Romney won 20 out of 45. The closest to him was Rudy with 8. It will be just my luck that all 8 of the Rudy fans are now delegates as well. Heaven help us if that's the case.

Now I may have sounded a bit cynical and that was not my intention. (well maybe just a little bit) I really had a great time, it was exciting to go there and see so many people involved. Since then I have done a lot more research (which probably would have come in handy before the caucus) and I am really leaning towards Mitt Romney. Not just because he's Mormon but his stance on a lot of issues just make sense to me. I've become really cynical when it comes to Mormon politicians. There are a couple in our state government, Governor Gibbons, and at the national level, Harry Reid, that I am really not fans of. But I also look at the talent pool in the republican race right now and Romney seems to be the only one that would actually stand a chance against whomever gets the democrats bid.

So it will be interesting to see how it goes. In the meantime, if there is anyone out there who knows how to fix a caucus, please drop a line.