I am very much a “process” guy. Our nation’s pride is that we are ruled by law, not by men. I stand for “due process” every single day in the practice of law. I get it.
In the presidential nomination process the parties of each state determine their own delegate selection process and every candidate should be prepared to win according to those processes. But that’s not the issue right now.
When Colorado awarded all of its delegates to Ted Cruz, who outplayed Donald Trump by making better use of Colorado’s delegate selection process, he did exactly what the system there was designed to do. BUT, listening to the rhetoric boiling up around the nation, it is obvious that Americans don’t care about that this year.
Angry Americans have had enough of watching the appropriate processes in Washington and elsewhere play-out without improvement in our condition. Angry Americans were raised to believe that process is good, that law and order are necessary and that decorum and mannered behavior are to be admired.
But, Americans today also share a common blood with our ancestors, the colonists who themselves lived in a very structured world where process, decorum and proper behavior were demanded, yet when they saw no change coming, liberty being repressed and more than a decade of complaints to the government ignored, they threw off process in favor of revolution.

Reflecting both the decorum of the times and that the time had come for revolution Patrick Henry said:
“I hope it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen if, entertaining as I do, opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely, and without reserve. This is no time for ceremony. The question before the House is one of awful moment to this country…
“Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done, to avert the storm which is now coming on.
“We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne. In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope.”
Today, as then, there are men who argue that to ignore decorum, to express disdain for the government, to talk of breaking from “process” invites anarchy and chaos. And they are right. But do not forget that when our founders finally concluded that they had no other choice, they accepted that risk and for the next decade and a half lived without agreement as to the formal set of rules by which to govern a nation until the Constitution was adopted and the rule of law was finally re-established.
Are we at a similar moment in history? Will Americans allow themselves to be shushed by the mere explanation that the Colorado delegate assignment is not cause for alarm because it followed “process”? Or have the people finally come to a breaking point? Have they so tired of watching “process” fail and having that failure forced down their throats that the excuse of “process” is now as much a call to political revolution as it was a call to arms for our forefathers?
I have watched the groundswell of anger grow over how the GOP nomination “process” is playing out. I have heard from one commentator after another that plots and plans are underway to thwart the will of the people, to use “rules” and “processes” already in place to preserve the status quo. And I hear louder and louder every day the growing number of voices around the country no longer afraid, no longer polite making it clear that they are going to take it “NO MORE!”
Perhaps it is the echo of Patrick Henry’s voice still ringing from the rafters of the House of Burgess that I hear:
“ If we wish to be free if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained, we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight!”
I think the fight has begun, and that this most recent gale that has swept down from the north has already brought the sound of political revolution.
It seems inevitable, now, sir.
Marcus Carey is a Northern Kentucky lawyer with 32 years experience. He is also a farmer, talk radio host and public speaker who loves history and politics. As a commentator, he is “dedicated to honest and respectful comment on the political and cultural issues of our time.”