Had a great time with 18 year old Evan Kenney (@evankenney) in studio tonight. He’s an impressive young man, just getting interested in politics and starting to get involved. That is, until he ran into the insiders that run the state GOP, such that it is. I’ll let the Herald’s Michael Graham explain,

Mass. GOP deals dirty
By Michael Graham

I have seen the future of the Republican Party in Massachusetts — and he’s an 18-year-old kid who just got screwed by Mitt Romney.

Evan Kenney was a senior at Wakefield High School when, inspired by a politically active teacher, he decided he’d like to become a delegate to the Republican National Convention. Kenney, a Ron Paul supporter, has no delusions about who the GOP nominee will be — Mitt Romney won 72 percent of the primary vote in Massachusetts — and he understood he would be casting his vote for Romney in Tampa.

So while his classmates were preparing for the prom and graduation, Kenney was learning the arcane workings of local GOP caucusing. He got on the phone and started organizing local voters — registered Republicans all — who shared his libertarian, small government, isolationist foreign policy views. He even convinced them to spend a Saturday morning in April at Lynnfield High School, sitting through boring political speeches so they could vote for him.

Kenney won, receiving more votes than the two former GOP gubernatorial candidates he was running against, Charlie Baker and Kerry Healey.

But in the end, it’s Baker and Healey who are going to Tampa as delegates to the RNC, while Kenney will be home learning a lesson in petty, partisan politics.

Why? Because the state GOP cheated.

When Romney’s preferred delegates lost, the campaign asked the state party to dump the winners. One problem — the winners actually won.

So the state GOP changed the rules after the voting, adding new paperwork and artificial deadlines. They even pulled an “Al Gore” and refused to count provisional ballots — a direct violation of the party’s rules.

As a result, Kenney and 16 other delegates/alternates who ran — and won — as Ron Paul libertarians had their seats stolen from them

Cheating, breaking their own rules, screwing over Republicans — isn’t that what Democrats are for?

Hour 1

Evan with Bruce McQuain of Q&O

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