PRECINCT MEETINGS TO DETERMINE COMPOSITION OF PARTY’S RANK-AND-FILE …
The South Carolina Republican Party (SCGOP) will be getting a new leader this spring – but the real battle for control of this institution begins next month as activists across the state gather for precinct reorganization meetings.
Precinct reorganization meetings are the sparsely-attended, yet often quite raucous local gatherings that ultimately determine the composition of the party’s rank and file.
In libraries, gymnasiums and barbecue joints all across the state, political activists of all persuasions gather to claim leadership posts at the local level – a process carefully monitored by select special interests who have guided direction of both major political parties in the state for decades.
These precinct meetings ultimately shape the ideological makeup of the SCGOP’s county conventions, which in turn determine the delegates who attend the party’s state convention – which will be held in mid-May this year at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center.
For years, this process flowed fairly smoothly for the special interests eager to safeguard the Palmetto State’s failed status quo.
In 2010, though, the influence of the Tea Party began to be felt – prompting increasingly open conflict within the ever-irascible activist community. And as the populist movement of Donald Trump began to take shape in 2015, these fissures became even more pronounced – and more volatile.
Now that Trump has won the White House (thanks in no small part to two stirring South Carolina victories), the SCGOP’s ongoing internal battles are very much back in focus.
Will the same populist surge that led Trump to his “First in the South” win and commanding November victory in the Palmetto State fundamentally reorient the trajectory of the state party? Or can the SCGOP establishment – which went “all-in” against Trump – manage to hold on to its influence?
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Good question. Sources tell FITSNews that an army of Trump supporters are organizing in anticipation of next month’s precinct meetings.
“For what? They’ve won the day already,” one SCGOP official told us.
Sounds like they won’t be facing much in the way of resistance from the old guard.
Of course not all Trump backers are participating in the “coup.” One of them, former GOP establishment activist Susan Chapman, explained why she is staying away from the party machinations in a Facebook post that’s been shared widely in the activist community.
“Trumpsters are not party joiners,” Chapman wrote. “They are fiercely independent people who work tirelessly and are not afraid to call it as they see it. Party affiliation means going with the status quo and that is not who they are or would ever become as it is not in their nature.”
According to Chapman, many Trump backers are “not interested in the party route as they work as a group silently getting the job done.”
“Party affiliation is nothing to them but the same old agendas with the same people protecting the same old tired and corrupt politicians and policies,” she wrote.
Amen to that …
Seriously. We couldn’t have said it any better than that.
This website abandoned what little support it had for the Republican party back in 2012 – and have never looked back. And the national party has done absolutely nothing since then to warrant our reconsideration. If anything, the GOP has pushed us further away.
Same with the state party – which is effectively run by a notoriously-corrupt 85-year-old “former” Democrat who has been spending and borrowing money hand over fist.
Why would anyone who actually cares about limited government join a party like that?
Easy … they wouldn’t.
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