Posted on 12/10/2007 10:38:03 AM PST by Lucius Cornelius Sulla
The common wisdom offered two possible outcomes in the race for the Republican nomination. In one scenario, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was to clean up early, and the momentum from early state victories was to carry him to a strong enough February 5 performance to stop former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani in his tracks.
The other possible outcome was the vindication of Giuliani’s “late-state” strategy. Despite losing in the early states, Giuliani was to make a strong stand in Florida on Jan. 29, then win most of the 22 state contests that are held on (or through) Feb. 5. This was supposed to make him the runaway leader, giving him the nomination.
It seemed reasonable enough a month ago, but recent events throw doubt upon both scenarios. Not only are both frontrunners in trouble, but there is also the matter of the extremely complicated, state-by-state process of selecting delegates — a process whose successful, early conclusion decreases in likelihood as the number of apparently viable candidates increases and the frontrunners’ leads decrease. The rules for awarding delegates, which have mattered little in recent presidential primaries with clear winners, are so complex as to boggle the mind.
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
'Republicans have been faced with a late leveling of the field — an overabundance of viable candidates that has resulted from persistent dissatisfaction with the purported frontrunners. As unlikely as it may seem, it could lead them into every political junkie’s nirvana: a political convention whose proceedings actually matter.'
There will be no floor fight in Minneapolis.
The convention is in St. Paul.
Ouch !
Not a conservative to be found.
I must be a political junkie. I welcome the chaos.
thank you for pointing that out
A brokered convention, far from merely being a big mess, could also be very good for the Republican party. It would certainly make for better ratings, and perhaps a bigger boost for the nominee, than the sterile dog and pony shows that made up previous conventions.
Television has ruined everything it has touched in American society, and American politics has been its biggest victim. We used to have nominating conventions that were raucous celebrations of our own very messy Jacksonian democracy. What made it so special was the process of peer review.
Politicians know their own. Unlike the voters, politicians know who of their group is a stuffed shirt, an airhead, a liar, a crook, a man with one and only one area of expertise, a drunk, a womanizer or a homo. Politicians speak to each other in code phrases, documented hilariously in a British TV series titled "Yes, Minister" some 25 years ago. In a brokered convention, peer review is critical in deciding who should represent the party and why. Assets and liabilities are discussed in smoke-filled rooms, and information not available to the voter helps to weed out those whose liabilities are simply too many.
It was television that changed everything.
The last brokered Republican convention was 1952, and even then the decision was rendered during the votes on delegate seating. There were stirring moments such as Sen. Everett Dirksen of Illinois' speech lambasting the liberal Republican wing for foisting another Dewey (Eisenhower) on the party instead of Taft. While such moments make for riveting television, they can hurt the party's image, and TV is all about image -- as the barely competent Jack Kennedy proved in 1960.
After the 1964 Republican convention in San Francisco and the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, party professionals turned the conventions into coronations where the Anointed One is presented to the people in the best possible light. The prototype is the 1972 Republican convention in Miami Beach where everything, including the applause, was scripted out in advance.
A brokered convention may not be pretty -- it will certainly make for messy television -- but it will galvanize the American public and send the ratings skyward. It will create the kind of dramatic moments we've been denied in American politics for over 50 years, since the beginning of the TV age.
I used the original source title. Complain to them!
Rules for the distribution of delegates in the Republican Party make a floor fight unlikely, but also make it very possible to select a nominee whom the majority of the party detests.
Unlike the Democrats’, many of the Republicans’ primaries are winner-take-all. This means that if Giuliani, for instance, wins 24% of the delegates, Romney takes 21%, Huckabee 14%, Thompson 13%, McCain 10%, Paul 8%, etc. guess what? No floor fight: Giuliani wins hands down.
On the other hand, among the Democrats, anyone who earns 15% of the vote usually gets a proportional share of the delegates. In the Republican case shown above, this wouldn’t cause much trouble, since only Giuliani and Huckabee would take any delegates at all. In the past, since Carter v. Kennedy, this hasn’t caused trouble for the Democrats, since usually two major candidates and one front-runner gradually emerged through the state-by-state primaries. As second-tier candidates dropped out, they released whatever delegates they accumulated to the first-place finisher. Combined with massive numbers of delegates-at-large, who would flock to the first-place finisher, the first-place finisher would easily have 50% of the vote.
But what happens after February 5th, for instance, when it’s Hillary 45, Obama 35, Edwards 20, and the superdelegates sense that Hillary can’t win? (She does worse than Obama, and much worse than Edwards in head-to-head matchups?) What happens when Edwards’ coalition of unionists and peaceniks won’t join Hillary?
Or what if it’s Obama 43, Hillary 37, Edwards 20, and Edwards’ good-ol’-boy vote, the Democratic plantation masters and Hillary’s machine won’t back the black guy? Sure, we all presume that the Machine will support Hillary in the end, but what if Obama gets the most votes? Will the Machine dare disenfranchise the black vote?
And don’t forget how geographically imbalanced the Democrat vote is: Southern blacks vs. inner-city blacks vs. rich white folk vs. poor white trash vs. the Hispanic majority of the Southwest. Richardson could be in low single-digits nationally and easily win 15% in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, etc.
Oops: In the example above I meant only Rudy and Romney would take any votes at all.
Either one of those as the nominee will equal a RAT landslide victory next Nov.
Both lose the 2nd Amendment voters, and the Religious right voters.
No Republican could win without those voters and the party wouldn’t survive.
I did!
I’m considering that a brokered convention would be an absolute disaster, consuming all spending money, while the involved candidates trash each other. The result would be a broke winner, starting out the race down 20 points, and probably tarred as an extremist or a waffler by his opponents.
The “what if”s I posed weren’t in ignorance of the possibility of a brokered convention, but more of a posing of the question: “How the hell does the party avoid the coming cataclysm?”
In the Democrats’ case, a brokered convention could even result in the party splintering badly, with millions of black voters siding with McKinney.
>> Either one of those as the nominee will equal a RAT landslide victory next Nov. <<
It was a purely hypothetical example.
>> There will be no floor fight in Minneapolis. The convention is in St. Paul. <<
Yeah, but the riots will spread quickly. (only kidding)
How ironic that the convention is in St. Paul? With all those road-to-Damascus conversions among the GOP front-runners (Giuliani, Romney, Huckabee, Thompson, etc.)
The piece looks at the “winner-take-all” issue in detail, and at specific states that use it. You should check it out.
Will the Machine dare disenfranchise the black vote?
The Machine will do WHATEVER it takes to win.The Machine cares only about taking power and nothing else matters.
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