Yesterday, I got up super early and drove down to Branson for the Missouri Republican Convention. I was elected as a delegate, so it was sort of my civic duty. There were some empty seats in the Jackson County section of the District 5 area, which was disappointing. At any rate, my vote counted. A resolution to add a Fair Tax resolution to the Republican platform lost by only six votes. I thought that was a sad thing. I think if more fiscally conservative folks from Jackson county had made the trip, it would have passed. The convention rules were not modified, so Missouri remains a winner takes all primary election state, a distinction which won by only 40 votes. The most enlightening thing I took away is more about how the process works in terms of protocol for introducing changes to the party platform. It's surprisingly easy to submit items for a vote, but not so easy to get people to agree with you. If the language is not clear, concise, unambiguous, and constitutional (usually), it won't pass the muster and a short debate will defeat it. I was flabbergasted by some of the mealy mouthed resolutions, some of which advertised the ignorance of their author.
I also didn't know human cloning as an issue was going to take up so much time. In my mind, human tissue without a heart and a brain is just that. It's not a person. If I had an organ failure threatening my life, I would be alienated by a zero cloning research policy. Therefore, I don't understand it. Please, clone my liver, so I have a spare, but please don't clone my whole person. If you do, make sure I'm dead first and please name him after me. If I ever decide that cloning at a single cell level is immoral, I would have to justify the deaths of those who could live if it were developed into their cure. Does the term blastocyte belong in the political arena? Apparently not, because before all of the resolutions were considered, a motion to adjourn was made, and everyone who was tired of listening to so many insane resolutions voted to just call it a day. I think we'll all be better off if the government would get out of the medical business.
The platform committee didn't do the best job of including resolutions from the caucuses, but I got the idea that they did include most things, but used more general wording for brevity. I also think that competing resolutions were weighed against the prevailing platform and were not considered important enough to include, specifically. Policies to allow mothers to give birth at home are great, but really too specific to include in the party platform, I think.
Here's an interesting video about who is controlling oil prices:
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