Posted on 10/14/2011 12:50:47 PM PDT by casablanca
Sounds like that's what Cain did. Since that is what you said he should do, why is it lame?
I wouldn't mind it. Put it in May and maybe you could stop the campaign season from starting so early. It's really the only way to give everyone an equal say. I'd try it with an instant-runoff ballot so nobody wins without a majority vote, this would shelve the role of the delegates in picking the nominee. Or you could award delegates proportionality and then let them battle it out at the convention, fun.
People can give you good reasons why it's a bad idea though.
>The way it is done now is BS by allowing a handful of states to be the ones who pick our candidate. I say we have a national primary day and let the chips fall where they may.<
It’ll never happen. We’re stuck letting a few states choose the candidate for the rest of us.
I wonder what the Founding Fathers would say about this incredibly biased method?
If all of the primaries were on the same day, I hope that we wouldn’t have an instant runoff. Several candidates would win primaries, and no one would win a majority of the delegates. The convention would be more suspenseful and exciting, causing more people to watch and hear the great republican ideas. When the 1980 Republican National Convention started, four candidates had delegates, and no one had a majority of the delegates. In Nov., Reagan won about 40 states.
The biggest problem with a national primary day is tha tthe candidate with the most money would almost certainly win. It would be almost impossible for a candidate to have grass-roots efforts in all 50 states, and an insurgent wouldn’t be able to, for example, win in Iowa or New Hampshire or South Carolina and then have enough time to raise funds and compete in other states. While it doesn’t seem fair that IA and NH always go first, it would be far worse if all 50 states voted on the same day.
Having a national primary day (of course the “states rights” crowd will scream about that scenario unless all 50 states adapt the same day one by one), then awarding delegates based on percentage of the vote won in each state seems like the best scenario to me. Right now it’s based on countries won or something, so McCain got 54 out of Illinois’ 57 delegates, despite the fact he only won 48% of the popular vote in the primary. The breakdown in 2008 for the Illinois primary was like this:
John McCain 426,777 - 47.45% - 54 delegates
Mitt Romney 257,265 - 28.60% - 3 delegates
Mike Huckabee 148,053 - 16.46% - 0 delegates
Ron Paul 45,055 - 5.01% - 0 delegates
Rudy Giuliani* 11,837 - 1.32% - 0 delegates
Fred Thompson* 7,259 - 0.81% - 0 delegates
*Candidate withdrew prior to the primary
I suppose under the alternate plan, Ron Paul’s 5% of the vote would entitle one or two of his nutty Illinois supporters to become delegates to the convention, but he still wouldn’t get anywhere close to the nomination. Besides, if the GOP convention has 5% Paul loons advocating for him, that prevents them from doing what they did in 2008 and having their own convention since the GOP nominee was decided before the convention started.
There might be an occasional outcome like Rahm Emanuel’s mayoral bid where some candidate gets over 50% of the delegates during the national primary and is thus assured of being the party nominee before the convention opens, but more likely than not you’d have 5 or 6 candidates going into the convention and you might see some wheeling and dealing during the convention where the third place guy throws his suppport to the second place guy so together their delegates outnumber the first place guy. That WOULD make conventions more exciting and harken back to the surprise picks of the 19th century, although a drawback would the guy with the biggest number of delegates going to the convention would complain he was robbed and his supporters would resent the process.
Personally, I’m tired of having no say in picking the candidate because the race is over by the time my state votes. Even when we had the insanely early Feb. 2nd primary so Illinois could be part of “super tuesday”, half the candiates had dropped out before any Illinois citizen got to weigh-in on who the candidate should be.
All 50 states should get a chance to vote on every announced GOP primary at the start of the primary season. But Iowa and NH will scream bloody murder if anyone moves to stop them from deciding the GOP nominee for the rest of teh country.
The ruling class would say that it is doing is so that it can be a weeding out process so that the candidates won’t have to raise enough money to run nationwide in a primary.
I can’t recall if I mentioned it before, but I think there should be primaries held perhaps 5 at a time over a 10-week period. Divide the country up into 5 sections geographically with 10 states each (or by population, again divided into 5 groupings), with a lottery held to determine the order in which they participate from each section (with no more than 1 per section). No state should be “guaranteed” to have a first in the nation as New Hampshire does, it is unfair and absurd.
Cain’s stand is “I will boycott NV but still hold events there.” Makes as much sense as RNC rules or..9-9-9.
No, there is still pressure being put on to get states like Fla to move back their primaries and move the entire season back.
Romney pulled some strings to get as many primaries as possible to move up, because the believes it is to his advantage to hold the primaries before a concensus alternative to Romney emerges.
It is very much to Cain’s advantage for the primaries to be moved back to their old schedule.
That wouldn’t be as bad as a national primary, that’s for sure. Of course, the hard part will be how to enforce it—NH would just hold their primary in January even if no delegates would be seated and the candidates would be too scared to ignore it (and the media would cover it).
“It’s really the only way to give everyone an equal say.”
Yes, I agree. There’s really no reason IA and NH should hold so much “sway” over the rest of the nation.
On paper they will penalize them just like Florida. In the long run they will vote at the convention not to impose the penalty. In the short term it will blunt some of the immediate impact of the causcus. In the long run all it will do is extend the race if it is close.
Federal intervention may be the only way, and of course the validity of that would be challenged in court. Or perhaps the RNC could mandate a change on it’s own somehow. (I don’t give a crap about what the Dems do but didn’t Hillary win the popular vote? ;d)
If all of the candidates ever got together and boycotted IA and NH........yeah like that would ever happen. ;p
>> States can caucus or have a primary when they please
Even if to advance a Romney agenda at the expense of further debates? Beware the establishment games.
“Or perhaps the RNC could mandate a change on it’s own somehow.”
Yes, but they want Milt, so they aren’t going to do squat.
It’s a great idea though, as getting the Feds involved is a bad idea IMO.
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