Tweet
The 2016 Republican Presidential primary could end up shorter, more organized, and with a much larger electorate if some in the RNC get their way.
After their 2012 failure, Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus created the Growth and Opportunity Project to try to figure out what went wrong and how it could be fixed. The group just issued their recommendations. While much of the report focuses on the party’s obviously serious demographic problems, some of the most interesting recommendations are about changing how the party selects its nominee.
To begin with the report recommends cutting the number of debates in half. Last election the party had 20 debates, that would be cut down to only 10 or 12.
They recommend also making big changes to how the primary elections are conducted to increase the number of regular people voting in the primary. They suggest a shorter primary session that uses a “regional primary system” instead of each state just randomly voting whenever they decide to. This would reduce the chance that the primary was decided after only a few states voted.
More significantly, they suggest eliminating most caucuses and conventions for selecting delegates. Instead, they want states to use actual primaries, which tend to have significantly more people taking part in.
While the official justification for these recommendations is the laudable goal of bringing more people into the party by using primaries as a recruitment tool, they would also have two other big unstated impacts. First, it would significantly weaken the power of the most diehard activist who tend to dominate caucuses. This would potentially make it easier for more moderate Republicans to run. Second, fewer debates and more people voting on a given election day would benefit better-funded candidates and those who already have high name recognition. This would make a grassroots driven insurgency candidacy less likely.
The net effect would be to reduce the power of hardcore conservative activists over the process. Of course adopting these change would require amending state laws and local party rules, which activists often have a lot of control over and I doubt many feel like giving up their influence.
Photo by NewsHour under Creative Commons license
13 Comments
Live by the Southern Strategy, die by the Southern Strategy.
The Big Business tycoons who made their pacts back in the 1960s with the forces of institutionalized bigotry were quite happy with the deal, right up until last November. Now that demographics and decency are biting them in their butts, they’re suddenly remorseful.
I daresay the Dems would probably like to marginalize their more progressive activists, too.
Further marginalize, I should probably say.
The GOP blamed their first loss to Obama on the Dems having a long Primary fight between Obama and Hilary that excited our base and got tons of media attention while McCain who won his primary early could never get attention from the Press, until he got Sarah as VP.
So the GOP changed their Primary around made it longer had a ton of debates.
What went wrong was instead of 2 strong candidates eliminating the rest and then battling each other for months several week candidates staid on fighting for months.
Mitt won not because he had new ideas the GOP all had the same ideas. Notice Obama won because he said he would end the wars and Hilary would not say that. ( Obama said a lot of things Hilary would not and did not mean)
Mitt Won not because he was the Best Speaker in the GOP but because he had the most money.
The most important part of this strategy is to minimize exposure of their ideas to the electorate.
The GOP is going to choose Convention delegates at their Primary how would this work?
Second FDL has noted that GOP Primary voters are out of touch wack jobs however it seems we have missed that
” diehard activist who tend to dominate caucuses.” the GOP local leadership is even more crazy.
Crazy people don’t give up power easy. Politicians I do not think are going to give up their GOP Delegate spots without a fight. So who losses seats Fundies and Rand Paul.
LOL… yeah, the GOP just wants to minimize the exposure of teh crazeeee in order to minize the damage to their “brand.” Duly noted that they’re not really saying that they’ll do some real soul-searching in order to consider new ideas or other pathways.
Nay, rather, just STFU some so that teh crazeeee don’t leak out so much, and then perhaps the rubes’ll believe that this here be the return of “compassionate conservatives” (an oxymoron if there ever was one) or some such and be *fooled* into voting for the GOP.
GOSH! Whadda strategy!!!111! w00t!
Yes but see the conflict with that and getting more moderate voters both in the primary, the general election and to serve as Delegates at the GOP Presidential Convention?
The GOP Brand right now is Anti Women, Anti Minority, Anti Gay etc most Moderate Voters do not want to seen with GOPers.
The GOP is hoping its unpopularity will be forgotten they hope that outside circumstances will make their ideas more popular.
The GOP is refusing to change, but they think they can get new people to join the GOP through…Magic?
The Corporate GOP seems to be pushing these changes in GOP Primaries order to weaken the Fundy and Rand Paul wings of the GOP. The Corporate GOP blame them for the loss that Mitt their boy lead them too.
I guess they failed to notice that both Hillary and Ob. can walk and chew gum, or to be more direct, can speak formal and intelligible English with thoughts and ideas.
True, Obama and Clinton are adept at articulating the neoconservative, neoliberal, authoritarian agenda in a way that makes it acceptable to Democratic voters.
The challenge for the Republicans in the face of a changing electorate, seems to be how to let them keep doing that, but without doing anything among themselves that would stand in the way of that agenda.
It must be exhausting for party leaders to keep trying to find superficial differences between the parties, on other than some social issues.
heh… ain’t that the truth?
At least there’s some minimal teeny sense of “satisfaction” that they have to “work hard” to make their Kabuki Show seem “for realz.”
shee…
Jon… I understand that as a general rule, primaries are government funded and caucuses are party funded. Am I correct? If so, I see this as DOA.
Even if it’s a state that has both a primary and a caucus, GOP activists would likely push for cutting spending and eliminated a primary, rather than eliminating a caucus.
I just don’t see how many elected officials (D or R) advocating this.
Well, it’s no McGovern Commission, that’s for sure.