My trip to the caucus

I participated in the Colorado GOP caucus last night. My current mood with regard to this whole debacle can be best summed up as "disillusioned". I checked the party website before I went down to the middle school to verify the room number. Everyone said to show up by 6:30 to be sure and sign in and be ready for the start of the caucus. When we arrived at the school at 6:20 no one knew what the hell was going on. We must have asked 10 people "Where are the precinct 152 republicans?" They all said "go around the corner to the left and sign in at the table." So we go around the corner. Now I should mention that I could tell by the demographics of the people in line that this was NOT the line for the Republicans. I live in an overwhelmingly white neighborhood and everyone in the line was either very old or very young and about 50% black. As we got closer to the table we saw an Obama sign on it and a lady passing out Obama stickers. So we bypassed the line and saw room 45, where we were supposed to be according to the website. We walked into room 45 and there was a large Obama sign hanging from the ceiling. So we wandered the school for another 20 minutes. When we got upstairs we saw some other republicans but no one knew anything about precinct 152, but at least there were republicans hanging out in the hallway. It turned out the guy in charge for our precinct was no where to be found so Nick and I commandeered a classroom with an open door, made our own sign and posted it on the door. I kind of expected the Republicans to be organized and show machine-like efficiency while the democrats had no organization to speak of. What I experienced was the exact opposite. The classroom started to fill up with people who, like us had been wandering the halls looking for our precinct, many of whom had been directed into the Obama room while wearing Romney paraphenelia. I knew going in that I was going to be in the minority as a McCain supporter, but I wasn't expecting the level of irrationality I heard around me. You'd think McCain was the second coming of Kruschev. But I managed to bite my tongue. Finally at around 7 the guy in charge got there, looking completely disorganized and overwhelmed. He brought the meeting to order and had us sign in. The turnout was about 5 times what it had ever been in the past. Out of around 400 registered republicans in our precinct, a whopping 27 actually showed up. We opened the meeting with an invocation in which I half-expect the angel Moroni to be mentioned. Then said the pledge of allegiance. The whole process of the meeting reminded me of the movie "The Life of Brian". A lot of time wasted. A lot of masturbatory procedural stuff. Electing a leader for the meeting. Electing a secretary, etc. I swear to God that they took up an offering for the republican party. Because if there's one thing the GOP doesn't have it's money. Next they said if anyone wanted to make a 1-minute speech on behalf of a candidate they could. I was tempted to get up and say "Can anyone here tell me the difference between Hillary Clinton's health care plan and the bill Romney signed as governor of Massachussetts?" But I didn't because I just wanted to get it over with. After about 45 minutes they finally took the presidential straw poll.(Which thankfully was a secret ballot.) The results were:
Mitt Romney- 21 votes.
John McCain- 4 votes.
Mike Huckabee- 2 votes.
Ron Paul- No Love.
After this was done, most of the group left. They still had to elect delegates and a bunch of other crap to take up another hour. We stayed a little longer, but as soon as their was a break in the action we managed to bail. Overall, this felt like a complete waste of time and I vastly prefer a regular primary to a caucus. This was the least democratic process I have ever taken part in. I would much rather show up and cast a ballot for the candidate of my choosing than go through this process which was clearly and obviously run by supporters of Obama and Romney respectively. Nobody involved with any other campaigns was visible at all. I wonder how many people showed up and changed their minds to go along with the herd. This wasn't a problem for me since I don't particularly care what the rest of the room thinks, but I could see where it would be for people more prone to avoid conflict. I went home and watched election returns to see that thankfully my experiences were atypical, with McCain racking up delegates, the resurgence of Huckabee, and Romney only winning a) states where he has lived b) states where there is a disproportionate number of mormons and c) states where they have these borderline-rigged caucuses. (Maybe "rigged" is not the right word since I don't think any actual wrong-doing occured. But the outcomes did seemed determined by who's people were running the show.) Next up for Colorado: the primaries to select senate and congressional nominees in April.