From the Colorado GOP convention

John Fund calls the Colorado GOP convention the scene of a political revolution. A Power Line reader writes with this first-hand report:

I thought you might be interested in a report on the Colorado state Republican convention. I attended the convention as a floor delegate from my local precinct in Arvada, Colorado. My wife and I also attended the dinner and VIP fundraiser the night before.

At the dinner/reception I was able to talk to several Republican legislators, including a couple of Congressmen. Of course most of the conversation was on the Cruz/Trump battle. One congressman in particular told me in no uncertain terms that Trump had a zero chance of getting the nomination. I don’t know for sure if meant that the “party” was not going to allow it or that he could not get to the necessary votes. However, the consensus was that he was not going to get to 1237 and that unless he made it on the first ballot, he stood no chance.

The other problem most of the politicians observed was the lack of grassroots organization within Trump’s campaign. This was almost as much a negative for Trump as any of his policy positions (if you could define any). I pretty much found that first-ballot sentiment at the convention as well. The one positive for Trump was that almost all of the Cruz supporters admitted that if Trump were the nominee they would eventually vote for him, but that they would probably not work and/or support him nearly as much as they would have for Cruz.

As you may know there are seven congressional districts in Colorado, each given 3 delegates to the national convention. Cruz has won all 21 of them. It was evident at the dinner and convention on Saturday that Trump (as well as Katich) was completely unorganized.

John Sununu made a speech at the dinner and convention for Kasich that drew only polite applause. Not much different for the spokesman for Trump at both events. Quite a bit different for Cruz (of course, he elected to speak at the convention).

There were about 3500 delegates and a couple of thousand more alternates and guests at the Convention Arena in Colorado Springs. It seemed to me that Cruz gave his (more or less) standard stump speech here, but he drew one standing ovation after another throughout his speech. I though he got the biggest response when he stated his unequivocal support for Israel. I also might note that other speakers during the day who expressed unqualified support for Israel got their best response from the delegates.

One of the duties of the delegates at this convention were to select the 17 ( I believe) at large delegates to the national convention. Cruz was the only one who had a clear and effectively advertised slate of pledged delegates/candidates. There were over 600 people on the ballot as potential delegates to the national convention that we had to vote on (what a ballot). All I know is that everyone in the row I was sitting in was marking his or ballot with the Cruz slate. I believe he wound up sweeping the state. Another thing to remember is that the delegates to the state convention were selected in mid-March, not just in the past couple of days.

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