Are the GOP rules really rigged against Donald Trump?

CNBC ^ | 2016 April 25 | Bruce Abramson and Jeff Ballabon

[CutePuppy]

"It's not fair!" may be the most pitiful lament in the English language, but Donald Trump seems intent upon adopting it as his battle cry heading into this summer's Republican convention. The GOP's poorly designed nominating process includes more than its share of problems, but is it really unfair to Trump? ..... < snip >

..... open primaries invite abuse from voters whose goals may not involve selecting the party's strongest representative. Those with deep ties to the party deserve greater input than those with tenuous or nonexistent connections. Yet Democrats and Republicans alike have chosen to pretend otherwise. ..... < snip >

..... While some might see this deception as unfair, however, it has hardly worked against Trump. Trump's connection to the Republican Party is weak and of recent vintage, and he often boasts that many of his supporters are new to the Republican Party. ..... If anything then, Trump is a beneficiary of this misrepresentation rather than its victim. ..... < snip >

..... In a reasonable system, each state would allocate delegates proportionately. ..... Still, the big losers in this arena have been Marco Rubio and John Kasich; Trump has leveraged about 40 percent of the vote into about 49 percent of the delegates. ..... < snip >

..... Few consider it unfair to award the Super Bowl, Stanley Cup, or World Series title to a team that failed to boast the best record in regular season play. Here, too, the rules have been clear for decades: ..... < snip >

..... Regardless, the tactical politicking pales in comparison to the unique advantages Trump's campaign has exploited with his enormous wealth and celebrity-driven free media coverage. Our political system hasn't been fair to Trump? Really? ..... < snip >

[HLPhat]

The FACTs is that BOTHERING TO SHOW UP mattered more than having an opinion for some polster.

But Trump didn’t do that either, did he Gomer Pyle.

“Trump Skipping Colorado GOP Convention”
http://www.google.com/#q=trump%20skips%20colorado%20springs

[Gaffer]

So what has been said that the entire process of final delegate selection was not over the course of at least 4 or 5 separate occasions? Is that your contention?

Rule of Law isn’t what’s being complained about here. It’s still the Rule of Rules.

[HLPhat]

>>Was it on a day where you had all day to do it?

No, it was in the evening. My wife, myself, and our 10 year old daughter all walked down to the H.S. after diner.

10 Year olds weren’t allowed to vote - but she still understood how it all worked.

[HLPhat]

>>the entire process of final delegate selection was not over the course of at least 4 or 5 separate occasions?

That's not what I saw.

We selected delegates from our neighborhood and they went to the state convention and chose state delegates from among themselves.

[Mechanicos]

Yet the Fact is if they had held a vote polls show Trump would have won. Instead there was the statistical impossibility of a clean slate with a brag “We did it #NeverTrump.”

You have no argument that can counter those facts.

As the courts are prone to say, even if the procedures taken in isolation are not troubling, if the result of those procedures added together is so lopsided as to defy reason there is problem.

[HLPhat]

>>Yet the Fact is if they had held a vote polls show Trump would have won.

Woulda Shoulda Coulda. Boohoo.

Maybe Trump would’a won if Trump and his supporters had SHOWN UP AND PARTICIPATED - but THEY DIDN’T.

Those who showed up from our neighborhood voted Cruzz 22 to Trump 6 in the straw poll.

That’s the facts.

Maybe next time all those opinionated folks should pull their heads out of their wherevers, get off their arses, and attend their neighborhood caucus. Ya Think?

[Political Junkie Too]

That's the point, isn't it?

Most people assume that their vote is the final say on the matter, and for the most part, it has been. As I said, the rules weren't a factor in selecting Romney, McCain, Bush, or Dole, so why would any average primary voter today even know about them, let alone participate in any post-voting processes?

Let me answer your specific question from my personal experience:

First, I spent the last 30 years living in California where we have no "rules." The parties do not select the delegates, the candidates do. Delegate candidates do not percolate up from precinct conventions to county conventions to state conventions to the national convention. A delegate candidate submits an application to the state party, and the party vets the application before passing names onto the candidates.

Second, in California there are 4.7 million registered Republicans, but only 341 delegates go to the national convention. Not good odds for someone who wants to participate as a delegate.

Third, county party meetings are party business meetings when they have them at all; they are not delegate selection meetings where the "rules" would become evident to one who is engaged in the process.

So, in California at least, the suggestion that one must "have ever been to a meeting in their local area" in order to discuss the flaws in this year's primary delegate selection process doesn't have meaning.

Now onto Texas, my new home state...

This is my first election cycle here. My precinct was in an area of new development. The precinct was so overwhelmed by turnout, that I arrived to vote after work one hour before the polls closed, but stood in line for close to 3 hours before getting to vote 2 hours after the polls technically closed.

Unlike California, Texas does have a precinct convention that selects delegates to a county convention that selects delegates to a state convention that selects delegates to the national convention. My precinct convention was held immediately after the polls closed. In fact, there was an organizer walking through the halls of the elementary school asking people to come to the precinct convention. Unfortunately, we were all stuck in line waiting to vote and had no hope of participating in the precinct convention.

The Texas Republican Party "About" page is vague about the role of the voter vs. the role of the delegate. In the section labeled "Primary Process" it says:

Republican Primary voters elect the Republican candidates who will appear on the general election ballot, their precinct chairmen, and their county chairmen. Thus, primary voters have a greater influence on the final outcome of the general election than those who only vote in the general election.

However, in the next section labeled "Political Party Conventions" it says:

In Texas, parties hold their own conventions in election years. In even-numbered years, Texas Republicans hold precinct conventions, county or senatorial district conventions, a state convention, and in presidential years, a national convention.

The purposes of the conventions are to:

• Choose delegates and alternates to the next higher convention level, when applicable; and
• Consider resolutions or statements on policy issues to send to the next higher convention and/or for eventual inclusion in the state or national Party platform.

So, in Texas, is it the voter who selects the candidate or the delegate who does it? I voted, but my first level convention conflicted so I was out of the rest of the process if I wanted to be a part. This raises an interesting side point: no notes were counted yet when the precinct convention was held, so it would be at the county or state level where delegate swapping would take place.

Anyway, to conclude, I'd be careful about tossing out any generalities about how many people actually participated in "rules" governed meetings as a way to suggest lack of credibility on the matter. As demonstrated, only a minute portion of the population has the ability to participate past the first level, and some states don't even operate that way at all, making it a moot charge.

-PJ

[Gaffer]

So what you’re expecting me to believe is that delegate selection (without en mass voter input) went from your local High School all the way to the State level with no intervening steps?

No neighborhood, precinct, country, district or region, then state? Is that the gist of it?

[HLPhat]

>>”if they had held a vote”

A vote was held - in EVERY neighborhood caucus precinct, where delegates were chosen for the representation of the Republic’s consenting governed.

But evidently some folks were either too stupid or too lazy to figure out how and where to show up and DO SO. Whose fault is that?

Thomas Jefferon had a fix for that: “EDUCATE THE COMMON PEOPLE”.

So maybe Trump’s Colorado supporter’s ought to figure out how to do what Jefferson suggested so things will turn out more to their liking the next time - INSTEAD OF BLAMING EVERYONE ELSE FOR THEIR FAILURE like a bunch liberal whiners who think their reality TeeVee star got cheated.

[gg188]

“If you are a NeverTrump type person, you are working against our purposes on FR, so please opus out now and log off and let us carry on with our mission in peace.

Continue insulting us with 24/7 anti-Trump diatribes and insults, your opus will be assumed.”

—— Jim Robinson

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3424005/posts

[HLPhat]

The neighborhood is the precinct. There were a bunch of precincts meeting at the local High School. Each precinct met in a different classroom.

I think the precincts were organized into districts at the state convention.

But...

“On Saturday, party members will choose delegates from a pool of about 600, two-thirds of whom have declined to say which candidate they will support. The prospective delegates will be allowed 10 seconds each to hurry across the stage at the Broadmoor World Arena and introduce themselves.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-04-08/wide-open-colorado-convention-is-a-republican-delegate-rodeo

The bottom line is that Tea Party folks were better organized than Trump Reality TeeVee fans.

Better luck next time!

[Political Junkie Too]

Not in my neighborhood caucus precinct. All I had to do was...

How many people in your neighborhood precinct had to work between 7:00pm - 9:00pm on a Tuesday night, or had to put schoolchildren to bed, or were asleep because they work graveyard shifts, and therefore couldn't participate?

Most states have polls open all day, have early voting, and have absentee voting, to enable as many people as possible to participate. These caucuses today seem anachronistic, and harks back to a time when the people complained about governmental processes being intentionally scheduled to stifle participation and coerce outcomes.

We once fought a revolution over things like this. In 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote:

---

Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

---

-PJ

[Gaffer]

Yeah...not as simple as when you first implied with your little list then, huh? - just google and walk down to the high school....

Ponder me this. If your neighborhood as you say went Carson, presumably just one choice of a multi-candidate field, why is it that the entire state level slate of Republican delegates got assigned to Cruz? Not even one delegate for Carson or Rubio or Kasich or whoever - from your neighborhood? ONLY CRUZ? Do you just live in a single isolated spot of recalcitrant holdouts who just tilt against the overwhelming windmill of Cruz-mania.

You expect me to believe a multi-level state party gang-bang-for-Cruz contrived to hierarchically filter out entry level party outsiders from interfering was the equivalent of a single day en masse voter preference poll, even at the token level?

Get real Cruzer.

[HLPhat]

>>Yeah...not as simple as when you first implied with your little list then, huh?

Maybe it’s just too complicated for a koolaid guzzling Hollywood libtard to comprehend with their tiny conspiratorial Reality TeeVee indoctrinated brain.

1. Neighborhood Precinct selects delegates at the local High School.
2. Those precinct delegates smooze and do whatever at the state convention.
3. State Delegates are selected from among the pool of 600 precinct delegates.

Maybe American Idolatry and Dancing with the Perverts is about all the Trump folks in Colorado can handle?

If so, just stay home like this time.

Your loss, not the Colorado Tea Party’s - we’ll show up, again.

[HLPhat]

>>How many people in your neighborhood precinct had to work between 7:00pm - 9:00pm on a Tuesday night, or had to put schoolchildren to bed, or were asleep because they work graveyard shifts, and therefore couldn't participate?

LIVES, FORTUNES, SACRED HONOR.

Ring any prioritized bells, Tex?

[Political Junkie Too]

Ping me when we form a new nation. Otherwise, read some of what the Framers thought of the expectations of the common citizens in the Federalist.

-PJ

[lilypad]

The voters feel cheated

[HLPhat]

>>read some of what the Framers thought of the expectations of the common citizens

You mean like the Framer who the super geniuses down there Texas tried to unexist from the public school curriculum Wiley a few years ago?

The Framers had kids to put to bed and jobs too.

But they SHOWED UP anyhow.

Got any other excuses?

[HLPhat]

>>The voters feel cheated

The Reality TeeVee Star’s fans got their arses handed to them by the grass roots Tea Party folks in Colorado.

Boo hoo.

Google “where is my caucus precinct in Colorado” next time and SHOW UP.

[Gaffer]

Your associate of Tea Party anything with Cruz is cute. Keep thinking that. Libtard I’m not. You can cruise on back through the years and see for yourself.

Idolatry and Dancing aren’t my tenets. But bullsh!t Elmer Gantry viciousness masquerading as fair and open are far worse. Hide behind rules as you may, they will smother you in what is to come.

Finally, yes, your “Colorado Republican Party” might come back but it won’t be under the fog of common voter apathy ever again. Your wonks and your insidership aren’t going to prevail in the future. You’ve all been weighed and measured and come up wanting. Go look at the after theft polls about what Republican voters think of what you did.