I attended my precinct’s caucus this evening for the Republican party. I had planned to run for the vice-chair position (which is also a county delegate). I would have liked to have run as the chair, but will be out of the country during the state convention, so I would be unable to attend to my duties and cast my vote.

My wife and I arrived early, and by the time we got started, there were only five in attendance. Our precinct spans the entire Traverse Mountain area in Lehi, which is not a small number of residents. Out of that number, five voters were there this evening. A great percentage, wouldn’t you agree?

The other couple was an individual named Brad Green, who was also accompanied by his wife (and their baby). In talking with Brad, I discovered that he was the person who goes by Ellis Wyatt in the Free Capitalist project. I had heard him before on the radio, and he had read some of my articles on the website, so it would good to put faces to names.

I nominated Brad as the chair, he accepted, and beat the incumbent (by a 3-2 vote; individual votes count when nobody shows up). He then nominated me for vice-chair, I accepted, and was not challenged.

As the discussion continued, the defeated incumbent and her neighbor, who arrived late, discovered that I am a Ron Paul supporter, am against the Iraq war, and believe that the Republican party has largely lost its way. They then started referring to Brad’s and my victory as a “hostile takeover”, with the neighbor wondering if somebody else could jump in to challenge me. Ha!

While I still feel uneasy about being affiliated with the Republican party, I look forward to having a greater amount of influence in changing things to (re-)introduce the principles of liberty, limited government, and free markets into the party I’ll be tied to for the next two years. This should be interesting.