Nominating contests too early? The RNC might sue!
5 States could be stripped of half their delegates.
By Mark Kilmer Posted in 2008 | primaries | Republicans | RNC — Comments (30) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
The Republican Party will hold a nominating convention next year from September 1-4 in St. Paul Minnesota. There is a move afoot by some party leaders, however, to strip half the voting delegates from the States of New Hampshire, Florida, South Carolina, Michigan, and Wyoming. Why? They moved their primary dates to earlier than the national peeps want. (Iowa and Nevada wouldn't feel the strong arm of the law, as their caucuses don't really count. They do not bind delegates to votes for any particular candidate at the national convention.)
Under the RNC's action Monday, Florida would lose 57 delegates, Michigan 30, South Carolina 23, Wyoming 14 and New Hampshire 12.
Why are they doing this?
"It's very important that our party uphold and enforce the rules that we unanimously voted into place at the Republican National Convention in 2004," said Mike Duncan, chairman of the Republican National Committee.
The rules ban holding votes before Feb. 5.
The Republican National Committee does not pay for these primaries, but they do try to make rules.
Duncan said there is plenty of legal precedent granting political parties the authority to set their own rules.
"I'm very confident of our legal footing," he said.
So they want to start chucking delegates in a de facto willy-nilly manner, fouling the nominating process, because they do not want a nominating contest when they do not want one?
Read On…
It strikes me as silliness. The Republican Party does set the rules for what makes a delegate eligible to vote, and the States' taxpayers fund the contests. If they want to ban any vote before February 5th, they are a little late. That train has long since left the station, and entire campaigns are being built, and money spent, around the basic schedule and timing of these contests. What happens to the candidate who is building his hopes around doing well in New Hampshire and Michigan if those States' delegates are decimated six times over?
Or you could look at this from another direction. The only State with any real delegate clout which could be affected is Florida; the rest are hood ornaments and momentum-builders. Whether the delegates each are allowed to vote in St. Paul or not, the winner of New Hampshire is the winner of New Hampshire, of South Carolina, South Carolina. That will help with fundraising, organization, and lots and lots o' talk in the media. (As it is in Iowa and Nevada right now.)
Solutions? Maybe, but it is not really a hindrance or that big a deal. Put on steel toed boots or which who is stepping where. A national primary is one thing, but it does nothing for the vetting process and it ruins the fun of the political junkies. I admit to being personally partial to the old concept of the moneyed, fat cat party bosses meeting in the smoke-filled rooms and selecting the nominee over imported Scotch at 2 in the morning, but I am far from an elitist. Really.
What the Party needs is to grow up. The goal of the Republican Party, in this process, is to nominate the best candidate who has the best chance of defeating the Democrat. If that can be done, the process is working fine no matter when people vote to nominate or when the national party tells them it had better be done OR ELSE.
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Nominating contests too early? The RNC might sue! 30 Comments (0 topical, 30 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
ALL states including NH and IA, doing their primaries/caucuses/state conventions on the same day, or else everyone just waiting until the convention and letting it be settled as God intended -- in smoke-filled backrooms! If we go the SUPER-duper Tuesday route, I would prefer that date be set for early June, so that we don't burden ourselves with two years of campaigning!
I really hate that things have devolved the way they have, but I'm afraid that the only real solution is a constitutional amendment. And I think that this is an amendment with a real shot at becoming law.
The amendment should say that all parties must hold their presidential primary on the same day in every state in the union in March or April. I think that if no presidential candidate gets more than 50% of the primary vote, then there should be a runoff the following week between the top two candidates, too. That way each party nominates their strongest candidate - not the one that is the most unique while his/her more similar opponents slice up the majority's vote between them and allow the lesser candidate to win by default.
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Let's nominate the Nash Equilibrium for President.
They're already institutionalized.
HTML Help Central for Red Staters
Let's nominate the Nash Equilibrium for President.
The parties are a way for voters to organize and accomplish mutual agendas, not a way for the powerful/connected/influential to organize and control the voters.
The two dynamics will always blur, that's the nature of it, but legislating the parties gives them undue influence imo, which ultimately comes at the cost of the voters, not just the states. I think it would be a bad precendent at the least.
Mike Duncan is right - legally the Party gets to set its own rules. If they don't want to seat delegates, there is nothing the state parties can do. They have no "right" to a certain number of delegates. The parties are not instruments of the state - they are membership organizations and are entitled to set their own rules for membership.
You don't need an amendment. What you need is for the national committees to do what they are doing - cutting delegates in accordance with the rules that were set down 4 years ago. The states that moved their contests did so thinking there would be no consequences. Now they see, maybe they were wrong. If the parties stand firm and defend their positions in court, they will win, and maybe come 2012 we won't be doing this again. Maybe the states will sit down at the coming national conventions and work out a system that everyone can deal with. And if they can't the parties should just keep docking the states their delegates until the state parties stop promoting and advocating moving primaries to ridiculously early dates.
The RNC people should just shut their mouths and let the states do their thing. Then come convention time, just only seat half the delegates those states send.
Too bad, so sad. Move on.
But don't get vocal about it now. It's too late to change their minds, and it's too soon to act on it.
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Let's nominate the Nash Equilibrium for President.
These state parties were aware of the rules before they set their new primary dates in defiance of them. They took their chance and they should pay the price for that. That is the only way this game of oneupsmanship stops.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
Why should the same states - Iowa, New Hampshire, and maybe South Carolina - election after election get to pick the nominee? We should rotate who goes first using a random process. Don't choose the order until a year before the election to stop early campaign creep. Then every state gets a shot at affecting the process. It would be good for the election and good for all parties.
I'm sure the party would benefit from that but you see, the Republican Party is too addicted to the subsidy of having the states pay to run our primary elections and our caucuses. And you see, once we did that, we handed over control over when to hold our primaries to the state governments.
And that assumes that the state parties would be willing to cooperate with RNC dictates, which isn't a given.
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Let's nominate the Nash Equilibrium for President.
Except for a smoke filled back room, anyway. There's no way the parties are going to find, rent, and staff their own polling places to conduct a primary in all the states. Maybe something could be done online, but then Ron Paul would just end up winning all the primaries.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
And even if the party didn't want to pony up the money to pay for it, there are always caucuses and state conventions.
HTML Help Central for Red Staters
Let's nominate the Nash Equilibrium for President.
We have a caucus system in this state, and it works the same way a primary does. We go to a government building (town hall, a school, a library, or a government center) to hold the caucus. There are probably more than a thousand different locations throughout the state. The only difference between the caucus and the election is that there's no poll workers there. If those government buildings weren't available, the system would fall apart.
As far as state conventions go, unless you have a system where delegates are elected from the caucus to the state convention, you are back to a smoke filled room where unelected bigwigs who happen to be connected just choose whoever they want. That doesn't seem like a step forward to me.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
The predictive value of those states is way overstated. NH seems to be wrong about as often as they are right... and that's even in a much small field. With a field this big there's a much better chance for any state to end out voting for a loser.
A randomized order wouldn't be bad, but it would be very difficult to pull off. We can't even enforce simple guidelines like "no primaries before this Feb 5."
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
I disagree. The states should be able to not hold primaries if they so desire, but if the states chose to have party primaries, they should have to abide by the parties rules. It's a freedom of association issue, if they are going to influence the parties nominating process by holding a primary, which they have the freedom not to do if they don't want to, they should have to abide by the rules of the parties whom they seek to influence.
Jindal/Palin '16
Divide the country up into 5 areas (10 states apiece). Have a primary vote every monday in 5 states (one from each area), starting on the 2nd monday of the year, for 10 weeks. Every election cycle, rotate it so that every state will get the chance the chance to be first, once every 40 years (I'm pretty sure that I am not the first to come up with this idea).
Neil said "I'd rather we not institutionalize parties." Sorry, but that boat left - in 1804. Its not coming back.
Is doing this at the federal level a good idea? In this case yes. The federal government would only require this for parties seeking to nominate candidates for federal offices - finding candidates for state offices would still be at the state level (but every state would hold the whole primary on the day of federal one).
Bad idea/good idea?
Evil prevails only when good men do nothing.
Because the two major parties in 1804 were the Democratic-Republicans and the Federalists. That Federalist Party was really institutionalized.
Let's be honest about what's being proposed. It's government interference in private political activity. No.
But in order to make sure that the primary dates aren't constantly pushed back as each state tries to be first, make the percentage of a state's delegates that can be seated at the convention be based on when that state has their primary.
So, just as an example, something like this:
Primaries before Feb 5: 0% of the state's delegates are seated.
Primaries between Feb 5-19: 20% of delegates are seated.
Primaries between Feb 19-Mar 4: 40% of delegates are seated.
Primaries between Mar 5-Mar 18: 60% of delegates are seated.
Primaries between Mar 19-Apr 1: 80% of delegates are seated.
Primaries after April 1: 100% of delegates are seated.
Then each state can determine whether it's in their best interest to go first and potentially give their primary's winning candidate momentum or whether they should go last and have all their delegates seated, or whether they should do something between the two. Most importantly, it leaves that decision up to the states instead of having the RNC trying to come up with some sort of random distribution.
I'd support a national primary day. or week; even extend it over a month. Iowa and NH could go first, followed by rest. To keep the smaller states "in play" have states with 20 delegates or less (or some number) go between Iowa/NH and the big 5 (calif., florida, ny and texas).
I realize I'm breaking this down along national lines, more than party primaries. Primary delegates may not break down quite like I have it listed above, but ultimately, you can't make everyone happy.
R.J.
I know the comment was tongue in cheek, but even so... The smoke-filled room selection of a nominee is exactly the reason we lost last year, not at the Presidential level, obviously, but at the Congressional level. The national Party and its nominees should reflect its members, not be overlords making decisions that are best left to us. You sound like the Democrat-nominee-to-be saying that some decisions are so important that other people have to make them for us.
Hillary Clinton? I don't get it.
Rahm Emanuel, Chuckie Schumer, and friends got together in their smoke-filled rooms for the 2006 elections and picked the candidates they thought matched best against the Republicans, especially in the more moderate-to-conservative districts. This paid off for them.
Then again, it was the smoke-filled room scenario which, arguably, brought us Bob Dole in '96.
I want the best candidate who has the best chance of defeating the Democrat. I do not want a flavor-of-the-month or the guy who can spend more of his own money selling his latest vision.
Is pure populism the way a party should be run, or does a party mean something beyond what the shifting winds dictate?
...but it gives me a great idea for a google-bomb.
"I should be allowed to think" -- John Linnell
"I want the best candidate who has the best chance of defeating the Democrat."
So is it just that you are happy that those in the smoke-filled room have chosen Rudy? Many of us have knocked on doors, made phone calls, worked full time plus jobs on elections, etc. and frankly I find it ludicrous to suggest that we shouldn't have a say in the matter. Decisions made from on high serve only to marginalize the footsoldiers who constitute half of the equation (those sitting in the smoke-filled rooms and the people they represent constitute the other half) of victory. I have no problem with corporations maxing out on contributions to their favorite candidates so long as at the end of the day, those of us who don't give six or seven figures to the GOP every year get a say in the process too. I can't guarantee right now that the candidate of the smoke-filled room won't win. I can guarantee that he can't do it without those whom you would like to have no say in the process, and eliminating that say is not the way to keep us on board.
...is that the Republican party was getting great mileage out of making fun of the Democratic party for all of its squabbling over Florida's primary schedule. Why ruin it ny getting into the same squabble?
"I should be allowed to think" -- John Linnell
... lampooning the Dems for their Florida nonsense, but I knew it might be on the horizon for the GOP if they couldn't keep their act together.
But at least it is not a crisis, so far as I can discern.
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Let's nominate the Nash Equilibrium for President.
The dates don't work.
http://www.eyeon08.com/2007/10/22/rnc-punishes-5-states-really/
Two of the smallest 14 states (by population) in Feb (either random, or institutionalize Iowa and NH)
Next 12 smallest states (by population) broken into 4 groups of 3 randomly, primaries once/week in March
Next 12 smallest states broken into 4 groups of 3 randomly, primaries once/week in April
Next 12 smallest states broken into 4 groups of 3 randomly, primaries once/week in May
12 largest states broken into 4 groups of 3 randomly, primaries once/week in June
Of course, the problem would be enforcing it.
and I must say that I am falling on the side of both National Committees on this and I will tell you why. My state, Illinois, is totally irrelevant because we didn't hold a vote and move our primaries up a la, Michigan. I am glad that Michigan becomes a player in the national primary elections, however it is at the expense of every other state that didn't move up their primaries. We are now on the verge of holding our first primaries in 2007. That is because every state wants to be a player and they move up their primaries and then other states move up theirs in response, and any state that doesn't become one of the mobs, loses out. That is patently ridiculous. Why should Illinois hurt this much because the rest of the states just up and decided to move their primaries up. This could go on forever and soon New Hampshire will vote in November. In the meantime, a huge state like Texas is totally irrelevant because their primary isn't until March or April. You have a total imbalance and it is because states on the fly change the playing field. I don't know the legalities however they certainly break the spirit of the rules when they move their primaries up three months before the elections. It isn't right, and I for one, think they should be punished.
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