Posted on 12/30/2013 8:44:43 AM PST by Theoria
A year after losing the popular vote for the fifth time in the last six presidential elections, the Republican Party has crafted a series of rules tweaks designed to regain control of and dramatically shorten its presidential nominating process.
The subcommittee charged with looking for fixes has approved five proposed changes for review by the Republican National Committee's rules committee at its January meeting. The full RNC would then need to pass the changes by a three-quarters supermajority.
"I think this strikes a good balance," said John Ryder, the RNC's general counsel.
February 2016 would be set aside for the traditional early states: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. The other states could start as soon as March 1, but could not hold winner-take-all contests before March 15. Larger states that violate either of those rules would lose all but nine of their delegates to the summer nominating convention, not counting their three RNC members who are automatic delegates. Smaller states would lose two-thirds of their delegates, not including the three RNC members.
At the back end of the calendar, state parties would have to submit their slates of convention delegates 45 days prior to the convention, rather than 35 days. With RNC leaders hoping to schedule the convention in late June, rather than late August, this would mean the last primaries and caucuses would have to be set for mid-May thereby cutting what was a six-month-long process in 2012 down to three-and-a-half months.
The balancing act, Ryder said, was to compress the calendar without giving an insurmountable advantage to a candidate who has "$200 million on day one."
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
Just don’t have endless debates moderated by journ-0-lists!
Another part of their strategy is to once again pre-select their establishment candidate whose “turn” it is,
and then place him against 5 conservative candidates that the base actually wants.
The establishment candidate gets 40% of the primary votes,
and each of the others gets 10-15% of the votes.
Haven’t we seen this game a few times already?
The GOP-E doesn't want closed primaries.
Liberal Republicans are unelectable.
/johnny
Ever notice that the “Boehner Bus” only has Conservative Republicans under it?
I wonder who they’re referring to who will have ‘$200mil on day one’.
I have an idea.
Just have one primary, and make it in Texas.
Easy there. I live here, in a few more years it will be California with guns.
The winner would not necesarrily be the richest, but the baddest ass ... and I think we could use a basdass Pubbie right about now.
No more, "My esteemed opponant .. " crap.
"Why, just last week that sleazy bastard ... "
Let the fur fly.
Democrats would vote for a Republican fighter !
wait a minute... the GOP itself can make the rule to change their primaries to ‘closed’??????
I thought it was somethign that HAD TO BE out of their control (controlled by individual states)
You mean THEY HAVE A CHOICE AND DONT STOP THIS?????
There is no reason why we have to even have the New Hampshire primary and Iowa caucuses going first. There is no reason why we have to have open primaries and go state by state over a period of months. There is no reason why we have to sit there while George Stefanapolos*0(sp?) asks absurd hypotheticals such as whether states can ban birth control.
Many things should change.
Well it would be nice if we actually did have some kind of say as to who the nominee will be.
Nah. The media loves to drag it out. Mo’ money from political advertising.
Reminds me of this:
http://gis.washington.edu/phurvitz/outgoing/bustagut/Non-SlanderousPoliticalSmearSpeech.htm
They had best be careful and rethink what they ask for. Sometimes the result from such actions are far worse than they imagine.
-— I notice that closed primaries aren’t on the agenda. -—
This is all so dammed frustrating.
The only short-term solution is to have Rush, Beck, Sean,and Mark endorse a candidate early.
/johnny
How about an UNendorsement of the GOPe candidate?
“See, they’ve set it up again - the establishment candidate vs 5 conservatives to split the vote. Now, I’m going to say it loud and clear, I UNENDORSE the establishment candidate!”
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