It’s a complete shit-show.
This last Saturday night, the Texas Republican Executive Committee held an emergency meeting about their in-person convention and live-streamed it. You can see it, in it’s full entirety to your right.
The purpose of their emergency meeting was to discuss the state convention. They were very hopeful that the Texas Supreme Court would still let them hold it in Houston. Today, the SCOTX decided they could not.
Bickering starts at the very beginning.
3:20 in, District 23, Leslie Thomas interrupts the meeting. She was all flustered. “We haven’t been called to order, we haven’t said our pledges…” she stammered.
[mepr-hide] https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); [/mepr-hide]GOP Executive Committee Chair, James Dickey, tried to calm her down and correct that they were called to order, but she just kept blabbering over him, until he said, “M’am, your statement was not true.” She still kept yammering on about the order that things were supposed to be done. Finally James Dickey called her deleterious, and then pushed to move on. 🍿
Yep, that’s how their meeting began.
Then roll call.
A lot of familiar names popped up, but then I heard Amy Hedke and spit my drink out, I laughed so hard. Amy Hedke is well known in certain circles as being someone who is unstable and perhaps even a little psychotic. Which totally makes sense that she’s now sitting on the GOP executive committee. As it turned out, she was just a proxy
Remember a few years back, when that group in Tarrant County used to follow police around with AR15s? They called themselves, Open Carry Cop Watch. They were extra bonkers. Amy used to be part of that group. And she wears those God awful boots, everywhere.
Here is a video of her getting arrested in 2017. Here is an article talking about the time she got arrested in 2016. There used to be more arrest videos of her, I can’t seem to find them now. One which she got into a scuffle with Rhome, TX PD when she was being detained on a civil matter involving shared custody and another when she told the Ellis County Commissioner to “Go Fuck Himself.”
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She also got in a bunch of trouble in 2015 for not paying child support.
Anyway, not to get too far sidetracked, but this is a good representation of how far off of the deep end that the Texas GOP has gone.
16:40 minutes in, they are still talking about the whether or not they called the meeting to order.
Walter West called a point of order to defend Leslie Thomas’ nonsensical rambling and told James Dickey, not everyone was in yet, when you called the meeting to order. Sheesh, who cares?
James Dickey responded, “It is true, I hadn’t called roll, but we did call the meeting to order, and it was after the start time. But, ya, absolutely….” Then he changes the subject.
[mepr-hide] https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); [/mepr-hide]24 minutes in.
James Dickey talks about suing the facility the GOP convention was supposed to be in and the city of Houston to force them to allow them to have an in-person convention during the city with the worst outbreak of the worst pandemic in a generation, while they have no hospital beds left.
James Dickey said, “Not surprisingly, our request was denied in the Liberal Harris County District Court.” Ha! So, we all knew that facts have a liberal bias, now James Dickey is asserting that common-sense also has a liberal bias. Fancy that.
He also claims that the halting of the convention is a Democratic effort to shutdown Texas Conservatives. Seriously. Then, he accused Democrats of voter suppression. I shit you not. They’re all off of their rockers.
We don’t take the threat of coronavirus seriously.
32 minutes in James Dickey says “Out opposition says that we want to do an in-person event because we don’t take the threat of coronavirus seriously.”
Then Robin Armstrong took the floor and said they had it all figured out, we were going to have temperature checks, complementary masks, and EMS on stand by.
No mention of social distancing, no mention of how asymptomatic people can infect others even without a fever.
Armstrong, “We were going to be an example to America and the world how we could put on a large event without anyone getting sick.”
38 minutes in they talk about how they have a contract that will force staff to work the convention, without regard for their safety.
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The next moment of petty bickering.
At 52:30 in, SD12 Jill Glover got all worked up about how they were muted when other people were speaking, so they were unable to interrupt.
James Dickey, “Clearly, you’re not muted now, that’s how you are able to speak.”
Jill Glover, “Sir, you just unmuted me. The perception from the delegates watching us, is we don’t have anything to say.”
They argued for about two minutes, until James Dickey had enough and said, “Thank you” and then re-muted her.
I get the feeling that none of these people like each other.
58 minutes in.
They don’t want to have any of their events virtually, because if they do then they may be forced to hold all of their events virtually. So, they want all events to be in-person.
How does this thing work?
An hour and 4 minutes in, they had to tell someone how to work the Zoom chat. Then, there was more bickering about them being muted.
Maybe that’s why they are so stuck on an in-person convention. Because the general age demographics of their base can’t figure out how to work a virtual meeting.
One hour and 11 minutes in, they were still talking about how to use Zoom.
More drama with the mute button.
Because so many people were angry about being muted, James Dickey unmuted everyone. Then, he had to repeatedly tell people, if you are not talking, please mute yourself. It seemed really complicated for some to understand.
[mepr-hide] https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); [/mepr-hide]James Dickey’s tone of voice was annoyed, to say the least.
Leslie Thomas comes up again.
This is at 1 hour and 22 minutes in.
“As we can see here, the chairman has extraordinary powers, he can choose to mute, he can go so fast that we can’t see what’s going on. It’s new technology, none of us are used to it, so we can’t react very quickly.”
She stammered and spoke slow through her entire statement. But she made a good point. If she can’t think quick enough to spit out a sentence, how can she think quick enough to attend a virtual meeting.
The credential committee is short of people by 10%.
Didn’t know that one. You can see that at 1 hour and 25 minutes in. It would so seem that if they did have an in-person convention, they would have many committee members not show.
But…if they have a virtual convention, most of them won’t know how to use the technology.
Oh, the conundrum the Texas GOP is facing. I’m not laughing. Are you laughing?
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But the Constitution.
Mark Ramsey came up at 1 hour and 32 minutes, and said that the Houston mayor was infringing on their Constitutional rights by not letting them have their Germapalooza in person.
Oops, I pressed that button on accident.
By 1 hour and 36 minutes in, James Dickey had called on almost a dozen people who raised their hand by mistake because they didn’t understand how to use Zoom.
They are disenfranchising us.
At 1 hours and 38 minutes in, Thomas Moore came up and talked about how they are being disenfranchised by not being allowed to have their convention in person.
Oh, relish in the irony of it. The party which sought to disenfranchise for decades, now feel as if they are disenfranchised, because “buttons are hard.”
[mepr-hide] https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); [/mepr-hide]He added, this is the 21st century and the majority of Americans are familiar with this type of technology. Plus, the Texas Democratic party had their entire convention virtually. “We are not backwards, compared to them,” he said with a backwoods draw, “We are not primitive compared to them.”
Oh, Tom, how delusional you are.
But we can’t see people’s body language at a virtual convention.
So said this guy, Mark someone at 1 hour and 42 minutes in.
These old GOP guys are so funny with their “dang you kids and your technology.”
Re-explaining how to use Zoom.
1 hour and 48 minutes in, this was discussed again and then James Dickey argued about the difference between a question and a debate. Interruption and bickering followed. But, they moved on.
These people are supposed to represent the Republican party, but half of them can’t even form a concise sentence, and even more than that can’t figure out how to press a couple of buttons in an every day app.
This is a dying political party.
1 hour and 55 minutes in, more bickering.
Michael Rains, gets all flustered and tries to understand how to talk, and tells James Dickey that he promised to let him speak, but he never did.
James Dickey, “Yeah, I said that, but we already voted.”
These people love adverbs.
Absolutely, completely, extraordinarily, positively, quickly, accidentally, clearly… Ugh. Almost each speaker inserted adverbs in their talking points. They did it excessively. 😂
[mepr-hide] https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); [/mepr-hide]What will become of the Texas GOP convention now?
Since, the SCOTX said today that they can not have their Convention in-person in Houston and it’s obvious that online technology is too difficult for them, it’s a mystery at this point. We’ll see how it pans out over the next few days.
Stay tuned.
Still Blue in Texas 