You Can't Play the Middle, Pick a Side
What's your County Committee doing?
If you care about the Republican Party in Arkansas you can't play the middle. It's time to take a side because the elites, the old guard establishment wants to burn down the entire Party with their refusal to acknowledge the June 8 actions taken by the State Convention, "the final authority in all party matters" per RPA Rules, Article I, Section 1(b).
Either you stand with RPA Rules / Roberts Rules to the letter -- or you stand with Party elites who continue to follow only parts of the rules and only when it suits their purposes, while otherwise attempting to have 18 people on the RPA Executive Committee (who operate under delegated authority) dictate their will over the entire state Party. There is no middle ground.
You've seen RPA Chair Joseph Wood shut the door on reporters who tried to show what was going on in that “emergency” closed Executive Committee meeting on Thursday, and now you are beginning to see which County Committees refuse to allow their members to see the facts for themselves -- uncensored from both sides -- about what's going on after the State Convention did its work.
Playing the Middle
Look at the Faulkner County Republican Committee (FCRC) playing the middle and, by so doing, is actually picking a side.
After Thursday's bogus Executive Committee meeting, County Chair Jason Bollinger confirmed with FCRC Convention delegate Jimmie Cavin that the FCRC would continue its plans to elect 18 new District Committee members at the regular August 26 meeting.
But then the next day, with no explanation, Bollinger censored the FCRC Facebook page where two items were published to directly inform the FCRC members and State Convention delegates about each side of Thursday's activities in Little Rock.
Bollinger deleted Wood’s original re-posted statement with a comment that the Executive Committee “illegally voted on Thursday,” as well as the following Facebook re-post with comment from Pulaski County Republicans showing the grassroots perspective:
Bollinger posted instead his own reworded comments, including both the RPA statement and Convention Chair Jennifer Lancaster's statement:
When asked the deleted posts, Bollinger talked about the possibility of litigation over the State Convention and, while he said "it needs to go to court," he went on to explain
I want to be very objective in the things that we say on our social media. And so I took out that one part that said "the illegal vote" because we don't necessarily need to imply that. It very likely was but we — I — just want to keep it to the fact and so what I did, I put in there "here's what happened," here's the quotes. So here's what Chairman Wood says and here's what Chairman Lancaster says. So, anyway, just keeping it very objective.
What Was the Question?
This comes after a very similar difficulty when an FCRC Executive Committee member chose to completely reword a member's written question, changing its meaning entirely as he “read” it out loud to a panel of four state Representatives at a recent FCRC meeting.
Sure looks like FCRC is picking a side!
Controlling the Message
Substituting leadership’s message for that of the people has gone on for too long in the Republican Party of Arkansas. The days of secret, behind-closed-doors meetings and controlling the message from the top down are over. Grassroots conservative voters in the Party have made their voices crystal clear at the State Convention despite the old guard’s best efforts to stop this long-overdue change.
Be sure you know about both sides and the truth of what's going on in the RPA with this latest top-down power play from the old guard establishment to usurp the State Convention, despite efforts to only discuss their sanitized version of the story.
It’s time to pick a side. Is YOUR County Committee censoring information? Or, is your County Committee leadership being transparent in support for the State Convention, our rules and platform, and our Arkansas motto: Regnat Populus?
It seems when put in a position of power, many too often play the middle in order to preserve their position regardless of right or wrong, but rather to hedge against either side prevailing.
Let the people rule, long over do, thank you for your post. We will never give in to them that are working against the people! Blessings to our party!