Representing Ron Paul

Thunder is a remarkable thing. In and of itself, it is harmless, a byproduct of dread force uncontained.

Its power lies in the imposition of its presence. The fear it inspires is that lightning has already struck. That the centurion oak has been touched, unnoticed, by some invisible bolt, and is rotting from the inside out.

Across the country, r3VOLutionaries are taking over local party meetings, seizing the attention of the GOP leaders they dethrone. Some observers scoff, saying that means nothing. They’re probably right. But if they aren’t, it’s too late to stop what Ron Paul has set in motion.

Here are three stories, a few among many reverberating throughout the country.

*****

Bob Fulkerson is in Houston. It’s March 28, the night before the state senate district convention, the final step in the biennial ritual to determine delegates to the Texas Republican Convention.

There will be a strong Ron Paul presence at the Congressional District 18 meeting — a subset of the larger state Senate District 6 — he learns. Supporters will make up 40 percent of the CD-18 attendance. They will not have the majority, so they decide to keep candidate affiliation a secret. Instead of blimps, fliers and t-shirts, r3VOLutionaries will identify themselves by wearing Band-Aids on their hands.

Harris County is a large place. Accordingly, a large convention is planned for Saturday, incorporating all five senate districts. In total, 5,000 Republicans descend with the rain upon Grace Community Church (one of those houses of worship with a website URL ending in .tv, and with an online form for credit card donations.)

The chair of the county GOP says it’s the largest convention they’ve ever held, the importance of which he stresses all the more, given the renewed actions and focus of the Democrats.

He says of the convention-goers: “They’re diehard grassroots conservatives. These are the people that are going to work in the hot Houston summer to register voters. The people that are going to come out to help turnout in November. They’re really what a lot of people would consider the heart and soul of the Republican Party. The people that are willing to work the streets and work to get people elected.”

A group of Band-Aid wearers hold an impromptu huddle in the back of the room where the CD-18 meeting will soon take place. What is said remains a mystery, but they do not arrange to vote on specific measures, or who precisely will become a delegate.

No need — their Band-Aids say all — each represents the whole.

They keep quiet and vote as one bloc. In CD-18, supporters sweep the six delegate spots, taking four of the alternates. In the larger SD-6, they comprise about one-third of the 45 selections to the state convention, according to Fulkerson.

Unless the Ron Paul presence is a figment of his supporters’ imagination, plainclothes r3Volutionaries must look like Republicans.

“I didn’t see any factions or anything like that. I saw a whole group of people, the entire delegation, that was supportive of Sen. McCain,” the county chair says. “So I’m surprised that someone would even characterize it that way, because I really didn’t see any divisions. I saw 5,000 people that were supportive of John McCain and making sure he was elected in November.”

*****

Band-Aids aren’t necessary 100 miles down U.S. Highway 59, says Toni Marek, organizer of the Ron Paul supporters in Victoria.

They organize before the convention, meeting in a complicit professional’s office to build and draft their own lists of delegates and resolutions. (A few supporters also act as double agents at the mainstream party’s pre-convention meetings.) Marek says the group members have grown beyond Ron Paul, though they revolve around his principles.

They’ve also graduated from the social networking site that enabled the initial grassroots effort. She says, “A lot of Meetup groups have, what you call, moles,” planted by the mainstream Republican Party.

“We organize things by phone call or word of mouth.”

They contemplate wearing blue shirts or name tags to the convention, but reconsider. By the time the convention arrives, they know they have the numbers to take over by sheer force.

The Old Cigar Factory is an historic building within the original 1824 city limits of Victoria, the third town in Texas chartered by the Mexican government.

The building’s air conditioning — if it exists — is spotty. The 75-odd people at the convention cram into a room suited for 50. Temperatures graze 80 degrees. The wind blows outside. Rain threatens. Inside, it is hot.

The meeting commences at 10 a.m. with the normal order of business. “There is an elephant in a roomful of elephants,” blogs a middle-aged educator (not an activist, but a Paul sympathizer, perhaps).

When the time comes to elect the permanent chair of the convention, the Paul supporters make their move (”an uprising of Young Turks,” the teacher says). The Turks comprise two-thirds of the attendance. It is a stunning, mostly bloodless coup.

The deposed GOP leaders, to their credit, handle defeat with aplomb, Marek says. The supporters, in turn, let them retain one spot in each committee. They also allow them five delegates to the state convention, reserving a spot for the state representative of five terms.

The supporters pass at least 100 resolutions. The convention ends at 1:30 p.m.

Marek says the outcome of the convention is a warning to the local establishment. “This woke them up, and it showed them that we mean business. We’re not joking around anymore. And they’re going to have to start being held accountable for things that are happening.”

*****

A crow flying northwest from Victoria to Abilene forms a flight path of some 350 miles cutting over Austin, the nexus of Paul’s Revolution.

A dispatch from the Abilene Reporter News the day after Saturday’s convention evidences the presence of r3VOLutionaries, though Ron Paul’s name nowhere appears. The convention in Abilene passed resolutions to let states decide abortion rights, oppose a national ID card, abolish the Federal Reserve, oppose the Trans Texas Corridor (as part of the proposal to create a North American Union), support the Second Amendment, withdraw the U.S. from the United Nations, dissolve the Internal Revenue Service and privatize Social Security.

The head of the Abilene Meetup, Tim McAtee, seems like a private individual — or someone, at least, who is protective of the efforts of his group. Perhaps these are innate characteristics. Perhaps, though, they are learned during the silence of the hunt, or the calamity of combat.

Questions concerning the convention are met with this response. He bristles at the use of the word “hijacking” to describe supporters’ actions and directs the reader to the more global events that he is, presumably, fighting against.

In comparison, the Taylor County GOP convention was, he writes, “Pretty boring stuff actually, not near as spectacular as the in process and newsworthy events I reffed you to above. In a nutshell, The material world is run by thos who “show up”it would seem.”

*****

And in an election cycle defined by Democratic energy and evangelical despondency, Ron Paul Republicans are the ones showing up. They are forcing the acknowledgment of party elders.

Some respond to the storm with King Lear’s rage, battling furiously to keep Paul supporters out of the political process. Some try to laugh it off, like Stubb on the Pequod. And others hope to ride it out, like Pecos Bill, in hopes the rain will stop falling.

Maybe it’s just noise, pointless thunder that has temporarily piqued the establishment’s attention. But if it’s lightning, then the GOP is impotent to prevent its power structure from toppling.

While the r3VOLution rolls on.