 the thursday night massacre  the clinton county republican party ccrp convention was held thursday august 14th to an overflow crowd which normally would be a good thing in this case however it turned out to be another example of ldquo dirty politics rdquo at issue was the selection of county delegates to the state convention for the purpose of selecting some state wide candidates for the november ballot the vote was controlled by a large block of voters all were certified as precinct delegates who apparently voted identically for the same 19 individuals number of elected delegates that the county can send to the state party convention most of the delegates that were elected and the voters who elected them had never before attended any ccrp meeting or event this block vote appears to have been orchestrated by a group from ingham county and abetted by clinton county residents for the purpose of insuring that lt governor calley is renominated as the lt governor republican party candidate at the state convention the above group organized a ldquo secret rdquo campaign to insure that the ldquo right rdquo county candidates would be elected as state delegates a list was prepared of the ldquo good rdquo candidates and these new precinct delegates most of which had never before been involved with the county party duly voted for the list thus the convention was stuffed with precinct delegates that either believed as the group organizers or would do as they were told so many new voters were present and by all voting for the same individuals they were able to control the ballot swept aside were the mainstays of the county party those who had freely given of their time and money in support of the ccrp thus the ldquo fix rdquo was in and those deemed desirable were elected obviously it meant nothing to the organizers of this movement or these new precinct delegates that the people who are the life blood of the county party were pushed aside we all know that this type of dirty politics is a fact of life at the national level but at the county level amongst so called friends and neighbors at a time when the party needs to be united to combat the very bad things going on in this country we have a group of individuals pulling this garbage it stinks and will cause a backlash that they will regret bruce harte bath  