Posted on 02/03/2012 9:45:14 PM PST by Billlknowles
Dear Chairman Preibus,
I am writing an open letter to you in hopes that you will do the right thing and make the Florida Republican Party abide by the rules of the Republican National Committee.
The state of Florida deliberately snubbed its' nose at the party and the rules several months ago when it voted to hold the Florida primary early, which has already cost if 49 delegates out of the original 99 delegates allocated by the RNC. Now they further give the party the middle finger by allocating the remaining delegates as "winner-take-all", instead of the proportional allotment that is defined in the RNC rules for any state that wishes to hold its' primary prior to April 1st.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who finished second in the Florida balloting has petitioned the Florida Republican Party to reverse the "winner-take-all" allocation and award him delegates based on the proportional vote he obtained. I don't think there will be any surprises here and Florida will not change its' mind.
I am asking you to step in and do the right thing by holding a rules committee meeting prior to the Republican Convention in Tampa to overturn the Florida decision and either strip the delegates completely away from the state or make them award the delegates proportionally as per the RNC rules. Why am I asking for the RNC to decide this now instead of at the Convention? It's simple. If the RNC does not act on this immediately, it will affect the delegate count in an unfair manner toward the 'leading' delegate holder as of date, Governoe Mitt Romney.
National Public Radio has applied the proportional formula to the Florida delegates and as of today, instead of Governor Romney receiving all 50 remaining delegates, he would only receive 23 while Speaker Gingrich would receive 16. This would change the cumulative total from Governor Romney leading Gingrich 59 to 23 to Speaker Gingrich leading Governor Romney 39 to 32. As you know, political campaigns are all about momentum, or lack there of. The RNC's failure to act on this is affecting the momentum off the GOP primary race, something that I would hope you would agree, the national party should have no reason to do. By affecting the momentum, this shift of delegates to where they rightfully belong, could allso affect the race for the nomination as a whole.
I, as a Republican, urge you to take action immediately should Florida rule not to overturn their decision.
Respectfully Submitted,
Bill Knowles Publisher WeArePolitics.com
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Great letter, but they probably think that Mitt bought those votes and would hate to be the cause of him wasting all those millions.
I doubt that Priebus will pay attention - the rule was put in place by his predecessor, Michael Steele - an honorable man and drummed out by the GOP elite.
Sadly, many FReepers were fooled by the character assassination of a decent man.
Later
Why play your ace in the hole? This aint beanbag, especially against a national party wanting a Romney coronation. But then rules only matter in virginia.
The RNC would only follow the rules if Newt had won the popular vote...its not about the law anymore, its about the man, who is now above the law.
Is this the way we start the administration, assuming Obama is defeated?
We will know them by their actions.
Of significance to me - Romney says nothing in this context to do the right thing.
When he is in office, if he ever gets there, he will be blaming inaction on the fact that he is not in charge of this or of that, and will defer to “other authorities” just as he referred to his lack of ability to influence superpac ads.
Do we want a man like that in charge? It seems we already do with Obama.
Graft. Corruption.
This is a chance for Romney to be his own influence peddler for good, and I note he declines.
Very good!
AMEN!!!
Not only should the Republican National Committee look at how Florida has awarded delegates, but EVERY state, “prior to 1 April 2012, [which holds] any presidential primary, caucus, convention, or other meeting to select National Convention delegates SHALL allocate delegates on a proportional basis. [Rule 15(b)(2).”
Therefore, no state should be able to contravene Rule 15(b)(2).
Otherwise, why have the Rule? Changing the Rule in mid-stream is unConstitutional.
To Willard Romney, assorted punditry and the GOP-E
“Character assassination is just another form of voter fraud.”
Dr.Thomas Sowell
bump
Great job! The RNC must do the right thing and abide by their own rules.
It appears that the GOP-E is once again ignoring the rank and file while expecting that we will just follow along behind the candidate of their choosing by breaking their own rules.
FL should be doubly penalized. New RNC rules state, "in addition to cutting delegates from states that ignore the sanctioned schedule, dictate that any state holding elections before April will award delegates proportionally, instead of to the popular vote winner.
This FL GOP Chairman (Lenny Curry) says all parties knew and and agreed to the Rule 11 (or whatever he called it)...is this in writing? I'm curious if it was signed off on by the candidates.
Bump!
I sent a letter by email to the RNC yesterday.
"Character assassination is just another form of voter fraud."
Dr.Thomas Sowell13 posted on February 4, 2012 2:38:17 AM EST by onyx
Gingrich should articulate the principle that people, including Romney, have First Amendment rights to publish, and to purchase advertising space or time. And he should follow that with a discussion of the irresponsibility which is at the heart of journalism, and which so readily polluted anti-Gingrich advertising which used journalism as if it were a font of historical truth. There is a lot of historical truth in journalism, of course - but there is a great deal more innuendo, half-truths, and outright erroneous misinformation and even disinformation in journalism.A salient example of this sort of thing was seen in the coverage of the "Duke Lacrosse Rape" case. What started out as a very thin case obviously being flogged by an overzealous prosecutor quickly revealed itself to be a nonexistent case in which charges were flung at patently arbitrarily selected targets. But - from the point of view of the irresponsible holders of the gatekeeping franchise of wire service journalism - it was a "great story." It was "great" because the alleged victim was a black woman, and the alleged perpetrators were white men. And it may even have been considered "great copy" for the very reason that the factual basis for it was thin-to-nonexistent - because it revealed the power of the journalist to "afflict the comfortable" more than would a case where the defendants were obviously guilty.
The anti-Gingrich people who paid money to advertise a journalist's casting Gingrich in a partisan negative light exploited the credulousness of the public which has been exposed to propaganda hyping the "objectivity" of journalism since memory of living man runneth not to the contrary. As unbalanced and unfair as the original "news" broadcast was, it is sheer demagoguery to quote it after the official government report cleared Gingrich completely of the charges the broadcast alleged.
Journalism has always been a business for partisans. From the founding era up to the Civil War era, readers selected their newspapers - to the extent that they had a choice - on the basis of the congeniality of the opinion of the printer of their paper of choice. There are still varying editorial stances among newspapers, of course. The salient example of a conservative editorial page is that of the Wall Street Journal. But in a larger sense, journalism as we know it is wire service journalism, with its newswire as a font of more stories than any one newspaper has space to fill. And whether you are the Wall Street Journal or a paper with a "liberal" editorial stance, it is stories from "the wire" - or internally written local stories by the paper itself which are written in style and tenor to be passed along to the other members of the wire service - which homogenize journalism so that it really doesn't much matter what outlet you read or listen to, the unstated assumptions of the stories are all the same.
The natural slant of journalism is that "journalism is important." The desire for attention, and for the ability to sell advertising space which flows from the ability to attract attention, is inherent in the business. It is natural that the journalism of the wire services would embody that slant, and they all do. The rules which journalists sometimes cite as the basis of their objectivity, what determines what they emphasize and what they do not report - "If it bleeds, it leads" and "'Man Bites Dog,' not 'Dog Bites Man'" - have no obvious relation to the public interest but have obvious utility for interesting the public. The claims of journalistic objectivity are themselves a means of hyping the importance of journalism. There is no gainsaying that those claims have insinuated themselves into the American culture, notwithstanding the fact that claiming objectivity is the very negation of the humility required to actually try to transcend the subjectivity which inheres in the human condition.
There is an old cautionary tale about a desire for attention, called "The Boy Who Cried 'Wolf'." Journalism is tempted to "cry 'wolf'" - and journalism is not very good at resisting that temptation. That is bad enough. But there is a type of person who elects to live in symbiosis with the journalist, having no moral or ideological commitment to any higher ideal than to obtain favorable PR, and to exploit it for monetary or political advantage. Such people participate along with journalists in "crying 'wolf'" by criticizing the people and institutions upon which the public depends. These complainers exploit the resulting PR for gain as union leaders, teachers (to a remarkable degree), and most of all, politicians. Such people are rewarded by the journalist with positive PR and positive labeling. They are called "progressive," "liberal," "moderate" - just about any positive label you can think of, except "objective," which is the one label journalists reserve exclusively to themselves. Of course, having the same mindset as the journalist, any "liberal" can get a job as a journalist at any time and - with no training or adjustment of mindset - become "objective." Just like George Stephanopolis.
Since the close 2000 presidential elections, one of the key GOP points concerning all elections is that it is wrong to change the rules after the voting.
One corallary to that, as this situation calls for, is that ALL the rules as set they were set, as of the primary vote in Florida, including the RNC’s rules, must be adhered to, or else how will the RNC enforce the rest of its rules.
Who will be next to deny the RNC’s rule making authority, using its refusal to enforce its own rules as the judgement against that authority. The RNC cannot expect the party to respect it, if it does not respect the non-partisan trust that goes with enforcing ALL its rules fairly, and not making partisan excuses for when they will, or won’t be enforced. Nor can it be trusted when it makes rulings, which everyone expects will be enforced, and then votes to change the rules after the fact, to please partisan interests in the party.
The rules were set, the voting was held, and now the rules need to be enforced, not ignored and not changed after the fact.
What is the RNC trying to achieve? A walkout at the Convention.
I had an aunt, now departed from this mortal coil, who was in the news reporting business for a southwestern city newspaper. For the most part, what she wrote was reasonable, even though she had personal liberal leanings. She did one grand expose — or at least it purported to be — on how American Indians had been misled about the dangers of radium in uranium mines and had been stiffed on related disability claims. For all I know it was mostly based in fact, even though it was the kind of thing that lends itself to bleeding-leading journalism. And we know that mismanagement of Indian treaties has been endemic with the Federal government, so this would be more down that same alley. But she had a cartoon posted over her writing desk that caused me a bit of a concern — it had a TV reporter screaming about things like Alar and “deadly apples,” then thinking to himself afterwards with a grin, “God, I love journalism!” I hope that was irony to her. She had a weird sense of humor sometimes, and used an Indian magic conch shell to sprinkle good luck water on her car....
Check this letter out:)
Thanks c_I_c. A great quote by Dr. Sowell. Fraud/misrepresentation runs rampant in our lives. The fraudsters devalue associations/life. The best you can do is avoid them on a personal level yet they permeate government and will destroy the republic if left unchecked. HOORAY Bill! BTTT!
Belated WELCOME ABOARD!
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