The following letter was sent to Delegates and Alternates to the 2014 Second Congressional District Republican Convention which takes place this Saturday in Ottumwa, Iowa. Yours truly is Alternate Delegate # 101 out of 104 alternates. Alternates are assigned their number and seated in the absence of Delegates sequentially. We wonder what poor Alternates 102-104 did to offend Chairman Chairwoman Chairperson Chair Davidson. We had the honor of being last, momentarily at least. All we know is that we want to party with 102, 103 & 104.
To: Second District Delegates and Alternates Veritaspac.com is a Scott County Iowa based journal of political opinion focused on helping Republicans keep true to a conservative agenda. We are particularly focused at this time with keeping the District and State platforms in tune with relevant issues of the day. We believe the proposed Second District platform to be an excellent example of meaningful issue identification and a conservative call to action. We applaud that it has not fallen pray to obfuscation, weak platitudes, and avoidance of important issues such as the platform that came out of Scott County under the influence of Chairperson Judy Davidson, now seeking election to the State Central Committee. That the proposed Second District Platform reinforces much of the current state platform and adds commendable items for referral is to its credit. It reflects an appropriate understanding that platforms are statements from the grassroots that speak to politicians and help to prioritize their efforts. Regrettably the Scott County Platform was gutted and rewritten, without notice to grassroots attendees at the precinct caucuses. Had there been such notice of intent to severely consolidate the platform into a collection of platitudes, it is undoubtable that that would have resulted in an organized response, debate, counter proposals, and delegate selection throughout the many precincts. The attempt seems to have been to create a collection of a few categorized generalities in order to obviate any platform discussions at the precinct and caucus level in the future. The "word" being ... don't bother to bring a pointed concern about a local, state, or federal matter that needs remedying or an action item - the party platform has everything covered in a few platitudes and generalities about "beliefs." The "caucus" becomes the occasion to submit your straw poll vote or dollar in the buck bag and go home. We are to have confidence that "leadership" will handle the issue part from there. Of course it turns the caucuses into little more than a primary. County convention will be reduced to listening to speeches from politicians, delegates into props . . . rather than in part to update an agenda for them to respond to and be held accountable to. This is being sent to you in part to warn against such attempts to make platforms irrelevant to the issues of the day -- a collection of blandishments and pointless generalities. The links provided are to articles posted on the veritaspac.com website which expose and criticize the Scott County manipulations and hopefully put conservatives on guard regarding such ill-conceived ideas elsewhere in the state. Included is a link to a full textual comparison of the previous Scott County platform and a summary article of some of what was left out or ridiculously obscured. The avoidance of mention of key timely issues we believe you will find astounding. A defense of meaningful platforms is linked to as well, along with an array of links to other articles of interest regarding Scott County Republican Central Committee Politics. This is the second time that a manipulative approach disregarding the integrity and traditions of the caucus to convention process has occurred in Scott County under the leadership of Chairperson Davidson. No less because of her then allegations about other factions, other states can point to Iowa's third largest county of late and credibly use it as an example of why Iowa should not be awarded its special "First in the Nation" status. County Chair Davidson was responsible for an atrocious assault on the integrity of the presidential selection process which of course does not end on precinct caucus night. The State Chair of the Romney campaign was appointed to sit on the Nominating Committee, and no other candidate organizer, with the purpose to pick delegates for the remainder of the process. Appearances were bad enough, but then that committee designed exclusionary rules resulting in subversion of fair minded unity building proportionality to the awarding of delegate positions. Those positions, are important to the integrity of the fulfillment of Iowa's presidential caucus to convention process. Ron Paul supporters were unfairly given less than one half the delegate positions their caucus night turnout warranted. They still would have been only 20% of the delegate strength. It was a pathetic power play. The matter is chronicled in the category Scott County Republican Matters within veritaspac.com. Similar tactics were used against conservatives in the eighties and nineties by the then establishment -- manipulations and exclusionary tactic to disallow fair representation at various levels. Conservatives cannot properly endorse perpetrators of such tactics used against them for positions of higher responsibility now. Regrettably, some Ron Paul proponents took Chair Davidson's disunifying / caucus integrity damaging conduct as the prime example of how party affairs are conducted. Their rally cry could easily have been "look what they did to us in Scott County," and the evidence would be undeniable. These are examples of the abuse of power and conservatives should not award the prime perpetrators. In order to grow the Party, as opposed to serving as a functionary promoting club membership, temporally benefiting from the people running from the disaster of Obama, Party leadership has to be fearlessly involved in articulating the differences between the parties, promoting and defending its policies and seeing to their implementation. We see none of that in Scott County. It does not require a chairperson to be frequently out front, but on occasion it would serve to demonstrate substance to personal assertions (which we do not personally dispute) of being personally "pro-life - traditional marriage - second amendment - fiscal responsibility" as candidate Davidson's campaign literature states. At least one would not expect to see support for the removal of action items from the platform implementing those views as she did. Gone is the call for a Human Life Amendment, gone are action items correcting the denigration of the Second Amendment (indeed it is not even mentioned), gone is opposition to the retention of the remaining Varnum decision judges, and absent without justification is support for a Balanced Budget Amendment. We often hear of Party leadership in other counties using their position to responsibly articulate Republican values. We rarely if ever see it here. If a leader is not going to personally use the bully pulpit afforded by their position on behalf of Republican policies, then a prime avenue readily available today would be effective use of the Web site. Unfortunately the Scott County Web site has been purposely limited to being little more than a calendar of events and notice board. No provision is made even for helpful links of an education or research value. Instead what is present is an internal Blog page which has not seen a post in months, a Twitter page link that is not operational, a Flickr page that had its last post in the fall of 2012 and Facebook postings that are primarily regurgitations of the calendar. The exceptions being some occasional cheerleading posts. The News page has gone months without a post, there being just not much happening in the world of politics. Some organizational documents have been recently added, (oblivious to how embarrassing they are) but readily available internal communication avenues promised last May (mail boxes) have never been implemented. We have no doubt it is about personal control rather than facilitating open vibrant party communication while avoiding the security problems with Facebook. Veritaspac.com contains much to document leadership problems in Scott County, which often serves as a microcosm of problems at the state and national level. Nevertheless the overwhelming number of posts imparted to our site are commentaries on topics such as Obamacare, exposing Media Bias (especially local), Obamanomics, Polling, Energy & Climate, Electioneering, Party & Candidate Integrity matters and much more. The posts are often pithy and not for the faint of heart. It also contains over 180 (and growing) categorized links to other publications along with other features. Please consider referring to our Web site to substantiate this commentary and as a resource useful to Republicans concerned about keeping the Party true to a conservative agenda. Roger Mall, Chairman Veritaspac
DIRECT LINKS TO REFERENCED COMMENTARY:
Links related to platform issues and Scott County
The Silly Scott County Platform
Somebody Tell Scott County Republican Leadership That Bill Clinton Supports Photo Voter ID
More On Scott County Platform — Key Matters Missing or Downplayed –
Pathetic attempts to lure “demographic” unicorns into the tent won’t work . . . saddle horses could bolt
Republican Candidate Recruitment in Scott County Races Lacking
Democrats – two unforced errors – Republicans five
Legislators Still Trying to Increase Iowa Fuel Taxes
Scott County Republican Party Muted
Nuances Do Not Turn Out The Base
Has David Axelrod been reading Veritas??
More Questions About the SCRCC Constitution . . .
Giving to Democrats Gore Any Oxen?
Platform Vandalized, Delegates Made Into Props
The Delegate Irrelevancy Platform
Platform (Page)
Side by side comparison of Scott County 2014 platform with 2012/2010
Links related to the 2012 Precinct Caucuses
Raw Deal — Part 2.3 Exclusionary Tactics
Scott County Republican Matters
Scroll to March and April of 2012 for much more 2012 Caucus commentary. Peruse for many other articles about Scott County
