-
Saturday — Scott County Republican Convention, Northside Baptist Church, Davenport
The world should not shut down because of flu and cold season
Perhaps the biggest news about the Scott County Republican County Convention is that it was held. Despite the current hysteria over the Wuhan coronavirus, rational people, a hallmark of most Republicans, gathered to hold a necessary convention in spite of having the typical much larger venue, this time a local high school, cancel with barely 24 hours notice.
Appropriate public health warnings for such gatherings were accommodated and abided by by the SCR. That said, for point of reference, many a tavern this St Patrick’s day weekend was more densely packed. Free people making free and reasonable decisions.
Our compliments to the organization committee and the Northside Baptist Church leadership exercising civic virtue. We thought the replacement venue would be too small for the occasion and feared parking ruinous for the facility if much more than a quorum showed up. The necessary quorum was 50 or so and yet 100 plus showed up, plus additional speakers and observers. We consider the number substantial given the hysteria and that people no doubt decided the venue would be too cramped regardless of Wuhan.
But all praise to the organizers who pulled it together and the attendees all of whom made it work. Hopefully the sod was not too damaged by the parked cars.
The event concluded ahead of scheduled time due to admonitions to candidate-speakers who nevertheless did adequate jobs presenting their case in only three minutes or so. Party business was shortchanged to the extent that a discussion on rules and platform organizational matters was needed. Advocates such as this writer decided to forgo raising such structural issues due to the extenuating circumstances.
The platform, as has particularly been the case for several years, has been short on timely events, local issues, and for lack of specificity, obscure or confusing in areas especially due to a fetish for platitudes rather than fleshing out resolutions to a reasonable extent. Timely items can always be dropped as conditions or events transpire. For example, to have nothing to say about President Trump’s impeachment, acquittal, and ongoing harassment by Democrats, his many successes, and a number of other matters open to platform committee discretion we find frustrating. Having only four people on the platform committee either burdens them or short-changes issues.
We will elaborate more on rule and platform development reforms in a future post. Some have been referenced in these pages in bi-yearly reports on party conventions.
