Posted on 01/31/2015 6:37:30 AM PST by cotton1706
There is a basic mystery at the heart of modern Republican presidential politics. The party’s voters, despite electing conservatives to the House and Senate, have repeatedly chosen relatively moderate nominees, like Mitt Romney and John McCain, in the primaries.
With the 2016 campaign underway, and candidates positioning themselves for money, endorsements and staff, the establishment of the party is again at the center of the conversation. Even though Mr. Romney said on Friday that he had decided not to pursue the nomination, a third Bush seems poised to run, and has suggested he will not bow down to conservative activists.
How does a Republican Party seemingly dominated by the South, energized by the Tea Party and elected by conservative voters also consistently support relatively moderate presidential nominees? The answer is the blue-state Republicans.
The blue-state Republicans make it far harder for a very conservative candidate to win the party’s nomination than the party’s reputation suggests. They also give a candidate who might seem somewhat out of touch with today’s Republican Party, like Jeb Bush, a larger base of potential support than is commonly thought.
It’s easy to forget about the blue-state Republicans. They’re all but extinct in Washington, since their candidates lose general elections to Democrats, and so officials elected by states and districts that supported Mr. Romney dominate the Republican Congress.
But the blue-state Republicans still possess the delegates, voters and resources to decide the nomination. In 2012, there were more Romney voters in California than in Texas, and in Chicago’s Cook County than in West Virginia. Mr. Romney won three times as many voters in overwhelmingly Democratic New York City than in Republican-leaning Alaska.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
But we need to be aware of this stuff.
Poor examples. Romney and McCain are liberals with R’s next to their names. Tom McClintock of California, a real conservative, on the other hand has been completely neutered by the CalDems.
Republicans tend to be practical and vote early to get it out of the way and not have to wait in line or work late on election day.
Those that vote early get less time to learn about the conservative candidates and have no opportunity to change their votes if a conservative candidate starts to get traction.
I believe that in 2012 Santorum could have won Michigan if practical Republicans hadn't already voted for the guy they had already heard about.
He might have picked up momentum from a win there and whatever you think about Santorum, he would have been a better candidate than Romney.
The author is a dolt. There is no mystery about the disparity between the sentiment of the party faithful and the ideology of the presidential candidates. Republican voters don’t chose the “moderates” to be their presidential candidates in the primaries: the voters who vote in the primaries chose them. Too many states have mandated open primaries. If the GOP wanted to be a real opposition party, or even a party which regarded taking its membership seriously as a point of honor, it select delegate by party-funded caucuses in every state that mandated open primaries and not hold a primary in those states.
I absolutely HATE this early voting crap!!!!! Why can’t people vote ON ELECTION DAY!!!!!! We managed to vote ON election day for 200 years and NOW people just CAN’T possibly vote ON ELECTION DAY?????? We are just SOOOOOOO DOOMED!!!!!!!
A large number of votes for Romney in Cook County Ill. and NYC sounds like voter fraud to me.
Add to that the open primaries.
This article is the NYT bragging about all of that.
I think dividing Cali into 5 states would be a good thing. That would make 4 states that grow and prosper and 2 that start seemingly rich but must decay and collapse without the prosperous productive areas to suck from. As it is the SanFranciscans and the Angelinos are cutting their own throats and everyone else's throats in the state by their environmental rules a. They are trying to shut down food production in the state and other things that rich coasties are embarrassed to be associated with.
Democrats being able to vote in Republican primaries doesn’t help either.
At any rate whoever the Democrat candidate is, even if it is Obama, he will be the President or Chairman or Sultan in 2017 if the Republicans or the Military or some other force that has not yet coalesced has not pulled off some powerful change.
Conservatives have the power in these areas but they won’t use it.
Running a third-party conservative in the general House elections would eliminate any RINOs in the House from “purple” areas. That would change the Party organization in these areas leading to more conservative candidates at all levels including the presidential.
We can afford to pay the price of giving the Dems a FEW seats in exchange for the fear and discipline it will instill.
A very simple message from conservatives, direct to the party leadership: Conservatives will not give money to the Jeb Bush campaign; conservatives will not support a Republican party with Jeb Bush at its helm; and, most importantly, conservatives will never vote for Jeb Bush.
While the Republican leadership, and the wealthy supporters demand that Jeb Bush will be the nominee, conservatives want them to know that they are wasting their money, even if they give Jeb Bush $10 billion, they are throwing their money down a rat hole.
And their trite threat, that conservatives *must* vote for Bush, or a (fill in the blank) Democrat will win, is done. The GOP-e, RINOs, and Republican liberals have tried that trick before, and it has ALWAYS failed.
Conservatives will not vote for Jeb Bush as “the lesser of evils”, on the grounds that a choice to vote for Belzebub or Asmodeus or Mammon, because “you HAVE to choose, or else you get Satan”, is not a choice.
Conservatives will not back any of them.
Each state should start with no more delegates than electoral votes. After that, an equal number of delegates should be assigned based on GOP control of governorships, U.S. Senators, Representatives and state legislatures.
Then there should be double, maybe even triple, the number of delegates based on how well the state delivers electoral votes to the GOP in November.
Let's take one of the three electoral vote states which consistently performs, say, Wyoming. They get their three electoral votes, then 0-3 based on statewide offices and legislative branches, all in GOP control, so they get three more. Finally, they get a score from 0-6 based on GOP electoral votes delivered in the last several electoral cycles for a perfect 6, or a total of 3 + 3 + 6 = 12 delegates.
Contrast them to Massachusetts who starts with 11 delegates based on their number of electoral votes, but score perfect zeros in every other category. Thus, 11 delegates is all they get.
Unfair because Massachusetts has about 12.7 times the voting population of Wyoming and still gets one less delegate? Maybe unfair to Wyoming which has delivered 18 electoral votes to the GOP since 1988 compared to exactly zero for Massachusetts. But population size still has to count for something.
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