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Republican
Liberty Caucus of Texas Successfully Represented at Texas GOP Convention!
June
2-3, 2006 - San Antonio, Texas
Don Zimmerman, RLC of Texas Executive
Director,
beginning our famous survey
Over
the weekend of June 2nd and 3rd, the Republican Liberty Caucus of Texas was
well represented at the Texas GOP Convention in San Antonio. This
Texas Republican Convention is the largest State GOP event in the country.
In
order to represent our ideals of limited government to the Texas GOP
delegates, the Republican Liberty Caucus of Texas sponsored a booth at the
convention. From the start, the booth proved to be a popular spot.
Delegates and other Republicans visited the booth in search of clipboards
with our World's Smallest Political Quizzes*.
Here
are the results from World's Smallest Political Quiz Event* at the 2006 GOP
Convention:
COMBINED
TOTAL SCORES FOR REPUBLICAN MEN AND WOMEN:
|
Conservative |
Libertarian |
Centrist |
Authoritarian |
Liberal |
|
38 % |
30 % |
25 % |
5 % |
2 % |
Note: 311 Republican
Delegates and other visitors took the Political quiz.
Overall the results were not at all surprising for a Republican
Convention. About 38% of the dots ended up being in the Conservative
quadrant, 30% in the Libertarian sphere, 25% Centrist and
7% Liberal and Authoritarian. The Conservative trend remains
the same from the older 2004 Convention, where the Conservative
percentage was at 38%, but it was down 5% compared to the 2002 Convention
where Conservatives made up 43% of the delegates. The Libertarian trend dropped
to 30% down 2% from the last 2004 Convention, where Libertarians made up 32%
of the delegates, and it's also lower from the older 2002 Convention where
Libertarians made up a larger 35% of the delegates, at that time. The
Centrist trend is the only philosophy showing strong growth, at 25%, up 4% from the last 2004 Convention
that had Centrists making up 21% of the delegates, and it's even higher compared to the
older 2002 Convention, where Centrists made up 17% of the delegates.
One cause may be that women have gone from 23% Centrist delegates, in 2004,
to 28% Centrist delegates, in 2006. The Authoritarian trend is down
to 5%, about 2% lower from previous Conventions. The Liberal trend
is holding constant at 2% of delegates, compared to older Conventions.
Political survey results
Close up of map
Among
large numbers of think tanks, conservative groups and vendors, the RLC easily had
one of the
most popular booths at the convention. At any given moment there would be
on average 5 to 10 interested individuals around the booth, inquiring about
the RLC (or Ron Paul), and discussing the benefits of creating a Grass-roots
network of Republicans looking for and helping out in campaigns to get more
Ron Paul type Republicans in office at all levels in Texas.
On our large quiz board, we wrote in the names of some
prominent politicians in the areas of the chart where they would likely
fall. This included conservatives; George W. Bush, Jack
Kemp; social conservatives, Dan Quayle and Pat Robertson, authoritarian
conservatives; Pat Buchanan and Bill Bennett, liberals; Kennedy, Clinton(s),
Kerry,
Gore and Gephardt; liberal-authoritarian; Jessie Jackson, Centrists; Colin
Powell, John McCain and Ross Perot and "moderate" libertarians;
Milton Friedman, Jessie Ventura, Steve Forbes and Barry Goldwater.
This display proved to be a success. Out of the delegates that
stopped by our booth to talk to us, we had 311 delegates take our survey. The vast majority of people
were thrilled with the location they ended up with and their
company.
In addition, for most attendees, it was the
first time they had seen political ideology as a two-dimensional space
instead of the usual one-dimensional left/right line. One could see many
quiz-taker's eyes light up as they realized that there was not only the
left-right axis, but also the axis of how much authority government should
exercise. We're sure many attendees will be thinking and talking about this
for quite a while.
311
Republican Delegates and other visitors, to our booth, were recorded on the
Nolan Chart. Not all visitors that took the quiz were recorded.
We estimate that close to 500 people stopped by our booth.
There
were some very interesting outcomes with the quiz. We used some
variations. Don Zimmerman hit on the idea of using orange dots to plot
MEN and green for WOMEN. Once again, third Convention in a
row, we noticed that there was a slight
tendency for women to score a little more liberal and authoritarian
than the men, and the men tended to score much more libertarian and
conservative than the
women.
WOMEN:
|
Conservative |
Libertarian |
Centrist |
Authoritarian |
Liberal |
|
35 % |
23 % |
28 % |
10 % |
4 % |
MEN:
|
Conservative |
Libertarian |
Centrist |
Authoritarian |
Liberal |
|
40 % |
33 % |
23 % |
3 % |
1 % |
Another unexplainable dichotomy resulted in
more men scoring as Perfect Conservatives (0% Personal Freedom, 100% Economics Freedom)
and very high
in the Libertarian area (~100% on Personal Freedom and ~100% on Economic Freedom).
These scores are similar to the last convention scores:
2004 RLC of Texas - World Smallest Political
Scores.
We would like to briefly thank our RLC volunteers that helped represent the
Republican Liberty Liberty Caucus of Texas at this year's Texas GOP
Convention:
Penny Langford (RLC of Texas Vice Chairman), Don Zimmerman (RLC of Texas Executive Director), John
Reed (RLC of Texas Secretary),
Bob
Vick (Burleson County RLC Director), John Pankratz (Hidalgo County RLC
Director),
Bob Bagley (Montgomery County
RLC Director),
Aaron Green of Montgomery
County, Warren Norred (Tarrant
County RLC Assistant Director), Susan Ashbrook (Ron Paul Aide), and Matt Santoro (RLC Volunteer).
We're
still excited about the potential for the pro-Liberty/Ron Paul movement to help the
GOP get back to it's Barry Goldwater
days. We'd like to see this type of RLC representation in every GOP
Convention, in every state. We will continue building our grass-roots
network of Republicans because our limited-government constituency base is not
well represented at the state level. We want to get better Republicans into
office, starting at the State House and County levels. Our pro-Liberty
members are currently being conned to help get big-government Republicans
into office. We exist to counter this state of affairs. To describe this movement, we've coined the phrase,
"Ron Paul Republicans." We are the "Ron Paul
Republicans!" We're
concerned about the future of our country and we'd like to see freedom and
liberty grow strong. Currently, the only hope for that is to grow a
large strong network of like-minded limited-government Republicans that will
work hard toward getting more Ron
Paul style Republicans into office, at the state and county levels. To emphasize this
point, here is an excerpt from our "PURPOSE" Section:
"...while
rolling back decades of government "nannyism" will require a great
deal of public education and grassroots lobbying, the most important means
of changing public policy is to change public officials. Therefore, the Republican
Liberty Caucus of Texas works
to elect pro-liberty Republicans to offices at all levels,
partisan and non-partisan, in both primary and general elections."
If you like our plan, please consider
contributing toward our/your organization by
joining with us. Please renew your membership or
join us for the first time.
 *Note - The Advocates for Self-Government's "World's Smallest Political
Quiz" was very useful in our outreach at the Texas GOP Convention; they
deserve a large amount of credit for our success. Take the "World's Smallest Political
Quiz" for yourself: http://www.self-gov.org/quiz.html
.
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