Last time Hatch was up for re-election I registered as a Republican and went to the caucus and primary to do what I could to get rid of him. I was disappointed.
My experience with that Utah County Republican Caucus was that if you don't have the same opinion as everyone else, no one is going to listen to you. I guess that's the definition of Democracy, but the majority of the event was having the incumbent politicians tell us how great they were, and had nothing to do with the exchange of ideas or conversation. In the last few minutes they let each person who wanted to represent a precinct give a two minute pitch and then had a public vote. The process appeared to be geared around hot-button issues and sound bites. It encouraged extreme views and a moderate like me felt unwelcome. If you want to make a difference at a caucus, you need to do a lot of work in advance. Long before the event the party machinery has already picked issues and winners. I'm not sure how to make a difference given the structure of the current system. Richard On Wednesday April 27 2011 15:18:00 Kyle Waters <[email protected]> wrote: > On 04/27/2011 03:13 PM, Jonathan Duncan wrote: > > > > A valid idea. Though I am registered as unaffiliated with any party > > because I got fed up with "party politics". > > > You do not need to be registered with the state as party member in order > to participate in a caucus. AFAIK the only reason you would need to be > registered as affiliated with a party is if you want to vote in the > Republican primaries. > > Kyle <snip> /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
