The (GOP) Elephant in the (Presidential) Room
You go away for a week and the world catches fire. I spent last week in isolation from the outside world in rural Tennessee (though, like Osama Bin Laden, I found that there was no place I could hide from the tactics employed by John Yoo).
In the interim, the dynamics of the GOP presidential field have shifted substantially: Donald Trump is out (who gets the vote of the Sy Sperling constituency now?), as is Mike Huckabee (thus further delaying the day that fried squirrel is served on White House china). Newt Gingrich is issuing pronouncements with the blindness and enthusiasm of a frat boy swinging at a pinata. And Ron Paul made clear that he wouldn't have killed Bin Laden unless the terrorist leader had broken into his Texas home and held his family at gunpoint... and then only if Osama shot first.
To the extent that the still-germinal GOP presidential race has a media narrative, it's thus far that this is a field of also-rans, none of them equal to the task of being the Republican presidential nominee, let alone defeating Barack Obama.
I don't share that concern. The field will be substantial in size and scope and we will eventually have at least a serviceable nominee facing a weak incumbent. Beyond that, all outcomes are contingent.
A bigger concern of mine (and one that Mike Murphy touched on elliptically in last week's installment of the main podcast) is the GOP's decision to adopt one of the worst features of the Democratic primary process: awarding primary delegates proportionately. As an RTT News story explains:
Because of a little known change in the Republican National Committee's rules in 2010, early GOP presidential primaries and caucuses will award delegates to the presidential nominating convention on a proportional basis.
In GOP presidential primaries in recent memory, the candidate who wins the most votes in any given state wins all of the votes of nominating delegates from that state at the national convention.
The revised timing rules for the 2012 primary, adopted by the RNC in 2010, now call for any state which holds a primary or caucus before April 1 to award their delegates on a proportional basis, rather than the winner-take-all method that Republicans have traditionally favored.
Having the old system in place was one of the reasons that Republicans had a presidential nominee three months earlier than Democrats in 2008 (a running start utterly wasted by John McCain). Proportional allocation is a recipe for a fractured and fractious party and -- with a wide field of candidates -- a potentially indecisive outcome to the primary season. Some will argue that it's a corrective to the disproportionate power of the first few states to vote. Fair enough. But making a bad system worse doesn't strike me as a good first step to reforming the process by which we choose our nominees.
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Feb '11
Re: The (GOP) Elephant in the (Presidential) Room
There is probably a middle ground. Say the first three past the post split the delegates amongst themselves, according to their proportions of the votes.
That eliminates the absurdity of winner-take-all in a close early race, especially since winner might be 25%, but also penalizes the really poor performers.
In this case "middle ground" does not mean "worst of both worlds."
Mar '11
Re: The (GOP) Elephant in the (Presidential) Room
Rewarding all of the delegates to the candidate with the most votes conveys an unmerited and unwise weight to the early state primaries. Why should Iowa, New Hampshire and So. Carolina decide who the nominee is? There are real differences in culture and opinion in the various states and every state should have an equal chance to affect the outcome. Rewarding delegates proportionately encourages that result.
Oct '10
Re: The (GOP) Elephant in the (Presidential) Room
Operation Chaos 2012.
Apr '11
Re: The (GOP) Elephant in the (Presidential) Room
Look at the bright side. It may keep ethanol politics out of the Republican primaries.
Dec '10
Re: The (GOP) Elephant in the (Presidential) Room
Setting aside for a moment your casual but utter misstatement of Rep. Paul's position:
Seems to me you have insufficiently made the case that an adjustment towards proportionality in primaries is worse. Worse for whom?
It certainly isn't worse for me, a person who votes in a battleground state in the general election that hasn't had a consequential GOP presidential primary race in a generation. It certainly isn't worse for currently marginal but interesting candidates like Herman Cain, Allen West, and Ron Paul. I don't think it is worse for the eventual winner who is forced to build campaign infrastructure in a wider array of states prior to the general election.
It is, though, worse for big money donors and political insiders. They won't find it as easy to rig the system for the candidate most acceptable to them. Like Bush II, Dole, and McCain.
Aug '10
Re: The (GOP) Elephant in the (Presidential) Room
Amen. In the last two presidential primaries, my candidate was no longer a candidate when the Tennessee primary rolled around, thanks to the winner-take-all approach.
I'm sure the voters in Iowa are swell folks, and well-informed. But, I'd like the opportunity to cast my vote from the same list of candidates as they do.
Mar '11
Re: The (GOP) Elephant in the (Presidential) Room
Ohio hasn't mattered in the primaries in my lifetime. All we had was McCain or nuthin this last time.
Proportional representation might make the party convention meaningful for once too, instead of a sorry excuse for speechifying and an boring formality.
A convention worth watching would bring much needed (and not faked) drama to our side. Right now, with fewer and fewer people watching the things on TV the convention is just useless tripe.
May '10
Re: The (GOP) Elephant in the (Presidential) Room
I think a long drawn out process is good. It keeps the eventual nominee sharp, and gives us a better chance for a nominee with broad appeal. In a situation like this, a heavy dose of democracy is a good thing.
May '11
Re: The (GOP) Elephant in the (Presidential) Room
I believe proportional representation is a good compromise. There's no reason that Iowa and Hew Hampshire should have the influence on the race that they do just because they're first. A long, drawn out race (like the Democrats had the last time by the way) is not necessarily a bad thing. It keeps the media attention on the candidates and does provide more time for a consensus to build.
May '10
Re: The (GOP) Elephant in the (Presidential) Room
Songwriter
Amen. In the last two presidential primaries, my candidate was no longer a candidate when the Tennessee primary rolled around, thanks to the winner-take-all approach.
I'm sure the voters in Iowa are swell folks, and well-informed. But, I'd like the opportunity to cast my vote from the same list of candidates as they do. · May 18 at 5:54am
And I add AmenAmen. This is exactly the right answer- maybe the date should be March something rather than April, or maybe it should float based on the primary/caucus schedule, but the goal of balancing out the earliest states is right on.
Only one who loves ethanol above all else embraces the idea that the easily manipulable Iowa process should have ruled our nominations so disproportionately since 1976.
Nov '10
Re: The (GOP) Elephant in the (Presidential) Room
Like Songwriter, I didn't even bother to vote in the 2008 primaries because by the time they got to Texas there was no possible way for McCain not to win. Something needs to be done to knock Iowa and New Hampshire down a peg or two, and this seems like a fair thing to try.