On September 16, 2009, the Brazos County Republican Club had a meeting that, from all accounts, made many leaders of the local Party sick to their stomachs…almost literally.

But first, know this: The Brazos County Republican Club is NOT the Brazos County Republican Party.

Read that again. It is VERY important. You could get the wrong idea or opinion if you don’t make that distinction.

Let me be clear (A little Obama-lingo there for those of you in the RNC and NRCC): These are two separate entities. The Club is a gathering of Republicans, the Party is the official party affiliated with the national party that holds the primaries, recruits candidates, doesn’t get invited to Mitt Romney’s “Religion” speech at The George Bush Presidential Library, etc.

They have NO official ties to each other.

The Republican Party does not provide any charter or membership to entities such as the Republican Club, The Young Republicans, The Republican Women, Pachyderm Clubs, Log Cabin Republicans, etc.

You could start your own organization and call it “Republican” something and the Party could not stop you from doing so. Many people attend the Club meetings who are in the Party, but I imagine many people who attend the local Lions Club meetings are in the Party, too. That does not mean the Lions Club runs the Party or represents the Party.

That’s important. VERY IMPORTANT!

The CLUB does NOT represent The PARTY.

The following is what Charles Ellis, who was leading the Brazos County Republican Club meeting, said at the September 16, 2009 meeting at the College Station Hilton. He is the gentleman who spoke after opening up the meeting and prayers and the Pledge of Allegiance were said, and prefacing his comments by saying he had a meeting in Houston with some other party leaders who will remain anonymous but he won’t:

“Things that these people came up with or that we came up with as a group that needed to be looked at seriously, ah, and one of those is global warming. It’s a big problem in our agricultural world. It is causing many many crops they will to fail, ah, in a lot, in a lot of areas. California being one. [...] What is happening in that area is important to us today and also may be important to our offspring and our offspring’s offspring.

The other thing was to keep and return some of our technical and heavy industry back to U.S. soil. Because our defense security is very much in jeopardy because some of the people who are supplying us (our military) are foreign manufacturers. They may not be friendly to us if we were to go to war. And it is very very important to take a look at what our manufacturing industry is. That’s where some of our more and more compensated jobs are that we are crying for right now because we have so many people who are unemployed.

And the next thing that they agreed upon. The third thing we agreed upon. And I admit that I was part of that [...] but anyway is the possible breakup of some of our larger firms and prevent firms from coming too big to fail. Some of those that were too big to fail in a sense were AIG, Enron (a long time before AIG), Goldman Sachs, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and lastly one that put an awful lot of people in the tank is Bernie Madoff’s group.

One question, one of the individuals with me went so far as to question commissions on loans and financial transactions because what that did was that that created the environment for someone to sell something in order for him to get another commission. Instead of being on salary and doing his job.

And that was the… what brought up was a little point was that, um, concerning the G20 group that met. They could not accomplish the worldwide problem of how to take care of loans in our control in our banks and financial institutions wordlwide and that was one of the problems that helped get Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in trouble.

I’m just mentioning these things… The reason I mention them is that one of the individuals made the comment that the last time he was at the Republican convention he was afraid to vote the way he really felt in one or two of the plank votes because of what someone else in that group that might be from his hometown might think of him later on. So one of the men said, ‘I just got up and went to the restroom when the vote came up so we wouldn’t be there.’

So I think this is something we need to think about when we’re talking about the Republican platform, when we’re talking about our Republican Party. Because I could tell you, I am truthfully scared. I’ve been shot at in anger before when I was wearing a uniform. But I was never scared of that as badly as I am scared right now for our nation and our nation’s security. Financially as well as might and arms.

I think we need to rethink our positions and there is some of you may disagree with me. That’s fine. I hope you don’t disagree with me because I think this is a very vital point that we need to think of. Now I, I have to tell each of you I agonized for several hours bfore I said I would come up here and say what I have said to you.”

Do not doubt me. That is what he said.

So, in essence, Mr. Ellis, a leader of the Republican Club advocates:

• Global warming regulation
• Government control of the Free Market
• UN/World Bank jurisdiction over banking laws

At this meeting were Paul Rieger, Chairman of the Brazos County Republican Party; Timothy Delasandro, District 17 Congressional Candidate and his wife Stefanie; Dave McIntyre, District 17 Congressional Candidate; and Ben Bius, Texas  Senate District 5 candidate. I was sitting right next to Ben. And that’s who I know of . The invitation list contains a veritable Who’s Who of area Republican leadership. Some 118 people on the list I have, and I know more than that received the forwarded invitation to the club meeting. There was a sign-in sheet for those attending to fill in before they entered.

In the last month I have spoken about this with Randy Hermes, Chair of the Brazos County Republican Party Leadership Committee; Chuck Konderla, Candidate for Bryan City Council; and Paul Rieger. And each of them expressed dismay and what I would describe as that sick feeling in their stomach.

And the former two weren’t even at the meeting…they heard about it from someone else. Without asking, I could just tell from the looks on the faces of the others I mention above that they were feeling the same way.

You could have heard a pin drop, and more than one of us were thinking that we might have gon into the wrong room. Was the Democrat Club meeting today instead?

After my discussions with these three, and Paul in particular, I can tell you that I am confident the actual Party has a deep concern for this liberal leaning amongst some Republicans and Republican organizations who are in a position of influence. I am assured and confident that Paul Rieger is attempting to move the official Party back to the Reagan Conservatism we all miss. Paul and the Party are attempting a purging of the liberal and moderate influences that have infiltrated the Party over the years, and it’s going to take a long time to eliminate those negative influences.

Frankly, I would encourage any conservative leaders who consider Mr. Charles Ellis’ words as not representing their values to leave the Republican Club or to petition the current leadership of the Club to either refute without exception Mr. Ellis’ stance or consider changing the name of their organization.

Limestone County has a very strong Conservative Club, which I believe formed out of the Republican organization there, and I have seen their meeting of over 70 gather in the small town of Kosse in that county – and that town has less than 500 residents, and the county is quite small, too. Certainly Brazos County can field a similar Conservative Club, and I suspect the party leadership would encourage it.

Either that or the Republican Club needs to reconsider its name or its leadership.

Kristofer Cowles has written 306 articles on this blog.

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Kristofer Cowles is the Publisher of American|Writes. Kristofer has been a small business owner since 1981. He is a nationally recognized public speaker known as Mister American focusing on American Exceptionalism. He is a political activist and has consulted on more than thirty-five national level campaigns as well as numerous local and state candidacies. His political work has been featured on Red State and multiple local news outlets. A full listing of Kristofer's involvement is located on the Full Disclosure page of this blog. Kristofer belongs to an elite group of Twitter users as the 780th most prolific Tweeter worldwide having tweeted more than 100,000 times as of November 2011.