Monday, March 18, 2013

Primary and Caucuses Shuffle

The other big procedural reform discussed in the RNC party assessment document today is to shift the party convention back from August to July or June, and compress the primaries and caucuses further to make that work. In order to do that, they suggest that the party "should strongly consider a regional primary system or some other form of a major reorganization."

We should divide this into two parts. The date of the convention is fully within the control of the RNC, and if they want to move it, they can.

As Josh Putnam has been tweeting today, however, the dates of the primaries and caucuses are...a lot harder to control. The RNC would need the cooperation of state governments, and in most cases the Democratic Party, to do any sort of "major" changes -- indeed, even getting the states currently holding primaries in the first week of June to switch is awful hard to do.

Moreover, it's a bad idea! Whatever the weaknesses of the Republican Party these days, it's pretty hard to see how the flow of primaries and caucuses has worked against them.  Perhaps Ames and the pre-primary period -- it's possible to make a case that Mitt Romney, John McCain, and Bob Dole would have been replaced by better candidates if getting to Iowa was easier. But from Iowa on, it's hard to see where they've gone badly wrong, especially in this latest cycle. What's more, whatever one thinks of the GOP losing candidates over the last couple decades, at least the process allowed them to reach a decision with a minimum of fuss. There's no guarantee that a new schedule would work nearly as well.

Fortunately, we can treat that whole section as (perhaps misguided) hand-waving. There's no reform commission, there's no proposed schedule, there's no buy-in to any of the longstanding reform schedules that people have been pushing forever. So it's probably not going to happen.

As for the convention...the report claims that the convention needs to be 60-90 days after the last primary. That's silly. Most of the pre-convention planning doesn't really depend on the nominee; the rest doesn't take that long. The 1980 Republican convention began on July 14, with the final primaries on June 3; the 1992 Democratic convention began on July 13, with the last primary on June 9. Granted, in both cases the convention was locked up earlier, but that virtually always happens, giving the nominee plenty of time. A full month still gives them basically all of July for the convention.

On the other hand, there's absolutely no reason to think that it matters at all whether the convention is in June, July, August, or early September. The convention's purpose these days is to signal to party voters who haven't tuned in yet, or who supported another candidate in the nomination contest, that the party nominee has the full and enthusiastic support of everyone who matters in the party; it doesn't really matter a lot when that happens, as far as I can tell. And to the extent that conventions (if they're run well) produce an additional brief polling surge, it's hard to argue that there's any advantage for that to happen any time other than the week of the election.

(Typo fixed)

17 comments:

  1. Conventions on the week of the election! Ha! But why not? After all, we have primaries in December.....

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  2. You mean "the convention" needs to be 60-90 days after the last primary.

    Presumably, they want to shorten the primary season and move the convention ahead to reduce the amount of time that Republicans are attacking each other and lengthen the time for concentrating on the Democrats, but that happens as the front runner emerges in any case.

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  3. This is one of those issues that I find to be mind-boggling about our political system.

    Political parties are private entities. They ought to be able to pick their candidates in whatever method and forum they wish to employ. The government should not be telling them how to do it.

    By the same token, the government should not be funding the mechanism for them to do it either. The current system represents a huge subsidy to the parties in power.

    I have often thought that our so-called two party system is not much better than the one-party system they have in China and used to have in other countries. The main issue is where does the "party" end and the "government" begin. When you have the government and the parties so incredibly intertwined as we do now, it's really hard to answer that question, particularly when you have the same moneyed elites funding both sides.

    It's no wonder its impossible for third parties to become relevant forces.

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    1. So we should have privatized elections? How would that benefit a third party? I think it'd be much less likely to see a 3rd party in that situation.

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    2. So we should have privatized elections? How would that benefit a third party? I think it'd be much less likely to see a 3rd party in that situation.

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  4. Wait, aren't there rules on what moneys can be spent when?

    Pres. Obama hammered Gov. Romney on air for 4-6 weeks before the Republican convention, when Romney's primary funds were exhausted and he could not yet touch his general election funds. Having an earlier convention releases those moneys for use.

    Pres. Bush II did exactly the same thing, BTW. It's a superb strategy.

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    1. Good point: general election money begins on the last day of the convention.

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  5. If conventions used to be held around the 4th of July, what were the reasons they were moved to Labor Day?

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    1. Maybe Josh Putnam will chime in, but in my head, I have "wanting to avoid the Olympics, China wanted them to start in August in 2008, and that just kinda stuck" in my head.

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    2. That's right, Matt. The RNC actually started the push to September in 2004 (Dems were in July that year) with their New York convention, but the Olympics pushed back-to-back conventions by both parties to late August/early September the last two cycles.

      "Pushed" is hardly fair to the Olympics. The out-party could easily have opted for a late July convention in 2008 or 2012, but chose August. And both parties were out of the White House in one cycle during that time and opted into the back-to-back arrangement.

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  6. Is it just me, or do all these changes smack of the GOP not wanting to be associated with Bachmann (etc)?

    Ames: in the really tiny world of Ames, crazy really can win, because Ames is all about intensity, which crazy does well.

    Debates: the takeaway from the debates was always which crazy uncle said what. Bachmann's immunizations, Perry's "oops", whatever.

    Shorter time frame: move the time period during which the media will talk about the nutjobs further away from the election, and shorten that frame.

    It really does seem to me like the RNC thinks its biggest problem is that they're being associated with the crazies. It's not their general election candidates, but their PRIMARY candidates that bothers them.

    Not saying their analysis is wrong or right....it just looks like that's the theory they're operating under.

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  7. The recommendations are aimed at marginalizing certain party factions, in favor of the establishment. That would just be continuing the trend we saw begin with the party rule changes at the 2012 convention.

    http://politi.co/Z9pl6j

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  8. Yes, I think Matt and Couves are on to something here, even if their terminology differs.

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    1. What a dilemma. You need the enthusiasts to spark interest and man the trenches, but you don't want them to gain too much power. Would this be a problem if more voters were engaged and participated in the primaries?

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    2. From my perspective: yes, just as much of a problem.

      The problem isn't that Bachmanns are winning; it's that they're getting airtime. That's going to happen as a consequence of who they are and why they're running. So, it appears the GOP is looking to just reduce their 15 minutes, and move it earlier in the calendar.

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  9. Has anyone been reading Ramesh Ponnurur recently? He seems to be hating on the Republican Party. Check out his most recent article at NRO (one of the best conservative sites, mainly because their writers have actually logical and differing opinions, unlike Townhall where basically all of them just try to scream over one another with their crazy thoughts)
    http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/343243/rncs-election-report-ramesh-ponnuru
    This time he is arguing that the GOP claim of they're doing well because they have 30 of the governorships is nonsense. Which I agree with, I mean you look at the approval ratings of those governors and hardly any are doing well, and a lot just got recent approval jumps because they agreed to do the medicaid expansion of obamacare.

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