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If I were ruler of the RNC and I designed the primaries… — 40 Comments

1. How about some type of ranked voting. JPL used it to choose their landing sites on Mars. This would help to prevent candidates being eliminated by votes being split to similar candidates. This current Trump situation would likely have been eliminated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_voting_system

2. Way too sensible for the stupid party.

3. Jason L:

   I considered—and rejected—ranked voting. The problem is that someone can end up everyone’s #2 choice and win. The problem has surfaced in Oakland, CA.

4. I like your ideas Neo.

   One thing I might add would be to limit the endless election cycle. No one could announce their candidacy, put together a staff, etc. until one year before election day.

   I am burned out, and we still have a long way to go.

5. Point 5 would cost a fortune.

6. 1) I agree.
   2) I disagree – WTA is designed to force a resolution.
   3) I agree.
   4) I disagree – More debates is what allowed Trump to be exposed. More info is better, and you can’t predetermine the schedule upon which the truth appears.
   5) I don’t know. I could imagine a democratic/populist solution like this being abused in the future.

7. Nick:

   Yes, I thought of the expense. But most years it probably wouldn’t come into play. And in the years it did, it could be a real party-saver.

8. States would never agree to it. No state would want to be told that their results were rejected. And no matter how rare the scenario would be, the primaries would have to be pushed earlier to potentially accommodate both run-offs.

9. The American people are getting this democracy thingy just so all wrong. Quick. Somebody do something before it’s too late.

   Wonder why the founders didn’t standardize the states’ nominating procedures for president? Maybe it was just an oversight.

   🙂

10. I feel (per your #1) voters should be required to register as a republican at least 90 days before the election. I favor that winner take all be eliminated, and delegates to awarded per the percentage of the votes each candidate receives. I completely agree that early voting should be eliminate and with fewer debates. I also agree that every candidate be asked identical questions.

    Although it might be unrealistic, I feel the tit for tat back and forth should not be allowed. Candidates should tell voters their positions on the important issues and let the voters decide which candidate matches their POV. If no candidate arrives at the convention with the necessary delegates, it will always be a messy process. Wheeling and dealing will inevitably be involved, it will not be pretty, but that is just what happens if no one arrives with the required number of delegates.

11. I’m not sure what the rationale behind an open primary is, other than some notion that it would help prevent “extremism”, or that it is somehow paying homage to democracy by allowing those who are not members of a party to get their fingers on the scale as well.

    The longer an institution exists, the more those on the sidelines somehow imagine that it is somehow theirs, too.

    “The fate of the Republican party is too important to leave in the hands of Republicans alone!”

12. I like debates, but I detest the current format.

    The candidates should get to ask the questions of the other candidates. You get one minute to ask. Your opponent gets two or three minutes to answer. You get a minute or two to follow up, and your opponent gets two or three minutes to answer that.

    No one else gets to talk, and time limits are rigidly enforced by the moderator, a nun with a ruler. Failing that, the moderator will be a sadist with the remote control to the electric shock collar each candidate is required to wear.

    Each candidate to ask or answer is selected at random.

    Moderators don’t get to dominate the proceeding or play favorites. This would also server as the model for the general election. So-called journalists will hate it, and so will Sec. Clinton.

13. Of course you can always have a supposedly “closed” primary, as they have in Michigan, which is in fact to all intents and purposes an open primary.

    Get this:

    “What is the difference between an Open Primary and a Closed Primary?
    Voters in an open primary are given a ballot with a column listing each qualified party’s candidates. Voters then decide which party primary they wish to participate in by voting only in the column of their party choice while in the privacy of the voting station. Voting for candidates in more than a single party’s column will void the entire partisan ballot.
    Voters in closed primaries must state the party primary they wish to participate in before being issued a ballot. The ballot given to voters only has candidates of the party that corresponds to the voter’s choice.

    See Michigan’s primary is “closed” because you have to select one ballot or the other as you go in! Sort of like “transsexuals” using gendered student bathrooms … you don’t actually have to be what it says to go in, you just have to say you are as you do.
    ‎
    http://www.michigan.gov/…/sos/Voters_QA_MIPresPrim_516112_7.pdf
    ‎

14. (2) I’m torn between proportional and winner takes all. On the winner takes all side is the fact that the presidential race is winner takes all, so why should the primaries be any different? On the other hand, winner takes all give any decision to the large cities (Detroit, Flint and Lansing in my case.)

    (4) I think that the good Rev. Sensing has the final word on the current state of debates is his most recent article, Why Debates are a Waste of Time. I would only add that presidential debates are more akin to a game show, where the candidates are the contestants.

    KRB

15. How about making TV channels allocate equal coverage for all candidates? Wild disparities like this year’s Trump coverage should be counted as campaign contibution or paid for by the candidate. Trump got way too much free time this year.
    I doubt that this would work, but it wouuld be a nice threat.

16. Why the dislike of early voting?

    I think we should have a ‘none of the above’ option as well. And it should be in the general, too.

17. mf:

    The Founders never envisioned the primary process as it currently exists.

    But since parties nominate candidates, parties are in charge of making the rules for this.

    Here’s a history:

    Despite the habit of the mainstream news media of treating the nomination process as a series of blockbuster heavyweight bouts with names such as “Super Tuesday”, the object of the game of winning the nomination in one of the two major parties is that of collecting the pledges from a majority of the delegates to the parties’ National Conventions held during the summer before the General Election. There are only three methods used at present to allocate delegates to presidential contenders: the “Caucus/Convention”, what is currently referred to as the “Presidential Primary” or some combination of the two. (For more details on the various methods which are usually used in the present day to allocate National Convention delegates, please see the “Glossary” page on this website.)

    The Caucus/Convention is the oldest of these, although it is only used nowadays in a relative handful of states and territories/dependencies; yet, while it does remain the most aged method of choosing National Convention delegates, it is not the original way the nascent parties of the very late 18th century going into the early 19th nominated their candidates for President and Vice-President. The original method of political parties nominating such candidates was through the practice of the legislative caucus, which itself grew out of the concept of filling vacancies in legislative bodies by co-optation (that is, the choosing of a person to fill the vacancy by vote of all the remaining members of that body): an ancient practice used in the election of aldermen to serve on Council in the Boroughs of merry old England which was also utilized in the early development of the Municipality in what became the United States…

    The Framers of the new United States Constitution of 1787, however, would have preferred to have had nothing to do with this concept of faction and, as a result, the issue of political parties was not even considered in the course of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. In part this was certainly due to a revulsion against the growing influence of faction and party on state and local politics on the part of at least some of the Framers, but more likely it can be largely attributed to the fact that these men- while brought to the forefront of politics in their own States as, in many cases, active members of factions/parties back home- honestly believed they were creating, in the “more perfect Union” of States their Constitution would soon govern, a hitherto unknown type of political entity which could somehow, in its novelty, prevent this virus of faction from spreading into the new Federal system they were creating by way of the artificial procedures of national election of the Chief Executive they had purposely built into their document. Nevertheless, it still seems rather surprising that men who, for the most part, were well-versed in the political wars of their respective Revolutionary War era States apparently did not take into account even the possibility that their new bicameral Congress might very well develop factions if not full-fledged political parties.

    In the original Constitutional framework, the Electoral College itself was to be the presidential nominating body- the equivalent of today’s National Conventions. Each Elector was to choose two men for President without having any idea as to how his individual ballot would affect the ultimate cumulative vote of the Electors as a whole. With the proviso that no more than one of the Elector’s two choices could be from the same State as the Elector himself, the assumption was that the Elector’s first choice would, most likely, be some “favorite son” from the Elector’s own home state while his second choice would be forced to be some other notable from perhaps the same region but, by constitutional edict, from a different state. Clearly, the Framers considered it more than likely that the second choices of various Electors would ultimately determine the five “nominees” for the office from whom the House of Representatives, voting by State not as individuals, would pick the next President (for it is doubtful any of them entertained the notion that- except in the case of George Washington- the Electoral College would ever produce a majority of the electoral vote for any of the Electors’ choices for President); it is equally as clear that the Framers also believed that they had come up with a system that would keep faction/party from becoming a factor in the election of a President. They, of course, were very wrong.

    The Electoral College system they devised was ingenious, but only in its theory. It was flawed in practice, however, because it denied the fact that human nature would inherently bring the same kinds of factions and parties into National politics that had already permeated State politics.

    Read the whole thing.

18. JuliB:

    Because things change quickly. Apparently a lot of people in Louisiana would have voted differently if there had been no early voting. I think that in general an election is a flawed system, but it’s supposed to be a snapshot of a single day. The day may be chosen rather arbitrarily, but it’s still a single day.

19. neo:

    The poibt is the fonders left it to the states to decide.

20. mf:

    But not in the current system. For a long time, the parties have decided. The current rules are hardly set in stone, though; they can be changed.

21. Agree no open primaries. Don’t know about how to run the voting for delegates better. 100% agree on the debates. Especially no “Did you hear what he said about you?” questions. Only a few questions per debate, identical to each candidate. No attacks on, or response to, the other candidates. Open-ended questions, with 5 minutes or more to answer: “What would you replace Obamacare with?” “What would you do about Russia’s activities in Ukraine?” “What are your top five priorities in strengthening the military?”

    Trump would have been gone after two debates.

22. Folks . . .

    I think the contents of this piece should part of our ongoing conversation in neo-land, even if it’s not directly related to any of today’s topics. The author, a military lawyer, makes an excellent case, probably the best case that it is possible to make, for Donald Trump.

    What’s more, he is a certifiable Good Guy. How do I know? He lived across the street from me for many years, until I moved west for my retirement years. He and I (and maybe spouses?) were the only non-Democrat-liberal-“progressive”-socialist types for miles around. Trust me.

    (Yes, it got lonely out there. Very lonely.)

    I hope you-all might give my ol’ buddy a fair hearing . . .

    — — — —

    Why I support Trump – and resent the elites trying to destroy him
    By John C. Kluge
    The New York Post
    March 5, 2016

    http://nypost.com/2016/03/05/why-i-support-trump-and-resent-the-elites-trying-to-destroy-him/

23. M J R:

    Without reading it (I have to go out for a bit), I have to say I object to the title. Now, he may not have written the title, but it has two words to which I vehemently object: “elites” and “destroy.”

    This “elites” thing is starting to really, really annoy me. It smacks of liberal/left rhetoric, and is populist demagoguery. Not to say there aren’t GOP power brokers, leaders, etc., who of course try to get what they want. That’s always going to be the case—they have opinions and preferences. But they are not all-powerful “elites” like royalty, and people have a lot of power too. I’ve written about this several times before.

    What’s more—and this is very important—there is nothing “elite” about a lot of Trump’s opposition. I think the vast majority of it is based on principle and judgment of character. I certainly base mine on that, as well as his record, and I am not following any “elites” nor could I care less about them.

    What’s more, what is this “destroy” garbage? That’s leftist talk, too. Like those articles with headlines such as “So and so DESTROYED so and so” in some debate or with some stupid Twitter quip.

24. M J R:

    I just skimmed it very quickly, and it misrepresents and glosses over the very real problems with Trump (completely leaves out Trump’s “BUSH LIED!” accusation and what it means). The entire piece seems to be motivated by animus towards the GOP. He also acts as though the character questions with Trump are merely a question of decorum and nasty language, which is another misrepresentation of the actual objections voiced by people on this blog and elsewhere, far more serious objections.

    He leaves out most of the objections to Trump, actually, in terms of his record both before this campaign and during it.

    And note how he treats Cruz. He really can’t say much against him so he just glosses over that and moves on.

25. The issue of primaries is not about Trump.
    Open primaries are and have been an abomination.
    Winner-take-all primaries are and have been an abomination when there are three or more candidates.

    State primaries are controlled by the Several States, though the RNC can determine the # of delegates per state based on a nationally applied criterion.

26. Neo:

    Actually it’s the people who decide. I figure standardization actoss parties and states would b very difficult to accomplish.

27. mf:

    It doesn’t have to be standardized. For example, caucuses could still happen in some states. States could set the rules for how far ahead a person would have to declare party affiliation, or whether to have it be winner take all or proportional. But the party can set guidelines; they already do (see this).

28. Neo:
    American “Elites” have been around for a long time, it goes without saying.
    Philosopher-kings at the U. of Wisconsin proposed governance by dispassionate, non-partisan objective elites around 1900, when the Progressive movement began. Elitist governance is a key Progressive tenet, kinda like Lenin’s Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

    The Progressive movement’s birth unfortunately coincided with the birth of the Imperial Presidency (16th and 17th Amendments, creation of the Federal Reserve, in the early 1900s). The Federal civil service was created in the late 1800s, took shape in the early 1900s, as a facilitator of “objective” elitism.

    The two, Progressive and Imperial, melded, and by fits and starts have inexorably become an invincible force.

29. Use Approval Voting. Voters can cast 1 vote for as many of the candidates as they want. Person with the most votes wins. If you like Cruz and Rubio, cast 1 vote for each. If you like Trump and Bush, cast 1 vote for each. Cruz, Carson, Fiorina; 1 vote for each. You vote for all the candidates that are acceptable to you. That way the long shots have a better chance of staying in the race. No wasted votes.

30. M J R:

    Great article. I too have never voted for a democrat. He has come to the same conclusion I have. I was fooled and he was fooled. Some weren’t. I think it would help to recognize that the important background this all is playing out against is that of war. GWB told us it was going to be a long war. Well liberal democracies do not do long wars well. It saps their vitality.

    Here are the words of someone who wasn’t fooled. This was written September 13, 2001:

    “As I see it, there are three options:

    1) Surrender. This means the end of globalization, withdrawal of any Americans who will come home to our shores, expulsion of the third world rabble from our land, and a militant defense of CONUS. I think this will prove more popular as an option than it appears now. Thirty years of Barney, Mr. Rogers, militant feminism and unrestricted immigration may have made this our only choice.

    2) Trivial retaliation, and continued globalization with inadequate security. I expect Bush to choose this option. By trivial, I do not mean a few cruise missiles-I expect him to fight a Vietnam war in South Asia. We will have many dead, but we will not have victory-and we will have many more committed “terrorists” after we are finished than we do now. The toll on American assets abroad and on our national territory over the next hundred years will be horrific.

    3) Carthaginian peace. There is a reason no young Japanese men are crashing planes into our aircraft carriers. It does not require “killing them all” or “paving Afghanistan”, or any of that other BS. It does require turning the enemy masses from their present course, which empowers, encourages, and facilitates the martyrs of the future. We can (and we probably will) kill most of the present fighters-but we can’t kill the system that births them unless we exceed the pain tolerance of their societies. This will be bloody, it will take years, and our European “allies” are going to turn on us after a few weeks.

    I favor #3. I would reluctantly settle for #1.

    I’m pretty sure we are going to get #2.”

    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/521998/posts?page=7#7

    Please recall that GWB never went full out for a win until the surge and that was quickly squanderd.

31. neo-neocon, 6:33 pm —
    neo-neocon, 6:40 pm —

    Thanks for giving the piece your attention. It was all I might ask, when I suggested, “I hope you-all might give my ol’ buddy a fair hearing.”

    I think he (John C. Kluge) makes very good points, even as he glosses over some others, such as the character question. When it comes to character, ultimately, it’ll be between Trump’s character, such as it is or is not, and Hillary!’s character, such as it is or is not — along with issues of policy and worldview and all that. He does state frankly that “It is not that I think Donald Trump is some savior or an ideal candidate. I don’t.”

    As to the “Bush lied” accusation, he comes close to addressing that where he writes, “Over the last 15 years, I have watched the then-chairman of the DNC say the idea that President Bush knew about 9/11 and let it happen was a ‘serious position held by many people,’ watched the vice president tell a black audience that Republicans would return them to slavery if they could, watched Harry Reid say Mitt Romney was a tax cheat without any reason to believe it was true,” and so on.

    He goes on to say, “and now you tell me that I should reject Trump because he is uncivil and mean to his opponents? Is that some kind of a joke?” But no, he does *not* directly tackle “Bush lied”. Nonetheless, I think that he makes some good points, that have to be weighed in with all of Trump’s negative points (which are legion), *and* with all of Hillary!’s negative points (which are legion) [I can’t find any good points at all with Hillary!].

    That he “really can’t say much against [Cruz] so he just glosses over that and moves on” is very telling.

    But in conclusion, I implore you and any interested others to take to heart this paragraph:

    “I don’t expect you to agree with me or start backing Trump. I would, however, encourage you to at least think about what I and others have said and to understand that the people backing Trump are not nihilists or uneducated hillbillies looking for a job. Some of us are pretty serious people and once considered ourselves conservatives. Even if you still hate Trump, you owe it to conservatism to ask yourself how exactly conservatism managed to alienate so many of its supporters such that they are now willing to vote for someone you loathe as much as Trump.”

    I have a couple of friends who support Trump. One of them was featured in a comment I posted a here couple of days ago. They’re not knuckle-dragging ignoramuses. They’re serious people who fear for our country. I personally am *not* a Trump fan. But I have a sense for where my friends and not a few others are coming from. My friend’s piece has aided me in that understanding. It’s a somewhat better sense now. Possibly others who read his piece may come away with a better sense as well, without being converts to The Cause.

    Anyway, thanks again, neo, for the fair hearing; it was all I could have asked.

32. mf, 7:33 pm —

    Thanks for reading the article. I thought it was very well done, in spite of the (legitimate!) points raised by neo in her meticulous critique. John Kluge gives us an intelligent glimpse into what’s making Trump fans tick, very possibly enunciating what many Trump fans feel but do not enunciate.

    Even should one be very anti-Trump, it can be useful to understand the adversary — sez M J R!

    The text you cited, from September 13, 2001, was pretty prescient. Hats off to whomever wrote it!

    And thanks for responding.

33. Interesting points Neo. One modification I would make would be to do away with all early voting. Just as I would do away with such scams as “motor voter” which is designed to make it ridiculously easy to become a registered voter, and for those who are inclined to do so, to cheat.

    Quick personal experience. When we moved to California, I registered when I transferred my driver’s license. My wife registered outside of a local supermarket, after I got into a conversation with a gent pushing a petition. We were both Navy veterans, so he registered my wife as a courtesy–no ID, no questions. How did a man sitting outside of Walmart have the ability to register voters?

    Neo, I also agree that this campaign against the “elites”, and the “establishment” has become tedious. Obviously, people who can be thus categorized, are people who have been successful, and who have chosen to be active in the political process. So, what is the alternative; listen to the unsuccessful, or those who have been apathetic? I also laugh, ironically, at people who do not view Donald Trump as part of the E & E group.

34. MJR:
    “Even if you still hate Trump, you owe it to conservatism to ask yourself how exactly conservatism managed to alienate so many of its supporters such that they are now willing to vote for someone you loathe as much as Trump.”
    Over the last generation, the Marxists purged all the moderates and conservatives from their elected and leadership positions. This left a big power vacuum in the middle, which the less ideological Republicans slowly filled, and the remaining actual philosophical conservatives became isolated.

    However, the new Republican middle still talked up smaller government, liberty, lower taxes, the Constitution, et al, because they had to in order to get the base they left behind to vote for them, but they were really no longer conservatives. However, the Tea Parties were largely composed of people who never participated in, or even paid attention to politics before, so to them the Republicans were the “conservative” party. Then they betrayed the Tea Parties and tarred all Republicans as the culprits.

    One of the common themes I see with Trump supporters is that Cruz is part of the “Establishment”, he’s lying about his opposition to amnesty, he’s just another corrupt politician. They actually have antipathy towards “conservatism” because they associate it with the Republican Party.

    Trump has used this lack of nuance of the angry political naifs, a lack of PC, stealing most of Cruz’ immigration plan only LOUDER, character assassination and a few unrealistic populist slogans to drive a wedge between Cruz and what should be his natural base.

    Anyways, that’s my speculation.

35. I should have added – I like a lot of things about your first four proposals, Neo. #1 is a shoo-in. #2 I have mixed feelings about; I’d have to really see the case laid out. I don’t have a problem with early voting, in theory. If campaigning were saner, we wouldn’t have to worry about things like peaking. As for the debates, that’s a long discussion we need to have as a society, but we probably couldn’t come up with a worse system than we have now.

36. MJR,

    I read the article twice before commenting… short version I found several issues to agree with and others to disagree with, but absolutely no reason to change my opinion of DJT. I will not vote for Trump. I will vote 3rd party if my choice is the dem or DJT. I also do not gawk at burning houses, train wrecks, or multi-vehicle pile ups. I move along and take care of what I can take care of; namely family.

37. geokstr, 9:01 pm — “One of the common themes I see with Trump supporters is that Cruz is part of the ‘Establishment’, he’s lying about his opposition to amnesty, he’s just another corrupt politician. They actually have antipathy towards ‘conservatism’ because they associate it with the Republican Party.”

    I think you have something there, people mistaking Republicanism for conservatism.

    I see something similar in people calling someone a RINO, which means literally, Republican In Name Only. It seems to be used for people who do not stick to a conservative line, in which case, a more accurate label may be CINO. But one can be a Republican while dissenting from this or that aspect of conservatism. Many Republicans are called RINO but are very Republican, as that is more a tribal identification than an ideological outlook.

    “Trump has used this lack of nuance of the angry political naifs, a lack of PC, stealing most of Cruz’ immigration plan only LOUDER, character assassination and a few unrealistic populist slogans to drive a wedge between Cruz and what should be his natural base.”

    Yep.

38. parker, 11:17 pm — “I found several issues to agree with and others to disagree with, but absolutely no reason to change my opinion of DJT.”

    As long as you’re aware that no one was trying to get you to change. (Also, as long as you’re aware that the article was not written by me, or necessarily reflects entirely my point of view. It thought it was worth discussing here at neo’s place.)

    The author himself (John Kluge) states, “I don’t expect you to agree with me or start backing Trump. I would, however, encourage you to at least think about what I and others have said . . . .” I continue to believe that Kluge’s essay is worthy of conderation by thinking people who are interested in the situation. I very much appreciate that you went to the trouble of reading it through — twice!

    “I will not vote for Trump. I will vote 3rd party if my choice is the dem or DJT. I also do not gawk at burning houses, train wrecks, or multi-vehicle pile ups. I move along and take care of what I can take care of; namely family.”

    This is at least as worthy a “take” on the situation as is Kluge’s.

    NOW:

    Am I talking out of both sides of my mouth here? YES, if only because I’m still trying to sort out the whole mess and make sense of it all. No course of action is particularly palatable to me right now, given what looks like it’s coming down the pike in November.

39. Correcting two typos.

    “*I* thought it was worth discussing here at neo’s place.”

    “I continue to believe that Kluge’s essay is worthy of conSIderation . . . .”

    Carry on . . .

40. M J R Says:
    “I thought it was worth discussing here at neo’s place.”
    You’re at neo’s place? I’m totally jealous.

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