Presidential Primary "News"

by: Grebner

Fri Apr 15, 2011 at 01:14:08 AM EDT

I guess it's news...  For over a year, I've wondered just how the Republicans were going to try to escape the dilemma they've constructed for themselves, just how they'll allocate Michigan's delegates among candidates for the Republican nomination.  I've asked Republican officials, media folks, pundits, consultants.  Until Bill Ballenger spoke up (Inside Michigan Politics, 4/11/2011) I've never gotten a complete answer.

Possibly due solely to my insistent prodding, Ballenger has asked around and concludes that the Republicans intend to reinstate a requirement for party declaration in order to vote in the presidential primary.  That boggles my mind, given how much the public (and election officials) hated it three years ago.  But since there aren't any easy ways out of the box, I suppose it's possible they'll hold their noses and scrape together the needed legislative votes.  But it really seems like the sort of vote that no individual legislator really wants to defend back home.  Party declaration - at least in a state which doesn't ordinarily require it - really hacks off the very voters who matter most in November:  the independents.

To back up just a little, here are the basic elements of the problem the Republicans face.

First, there's no existing law, because yours truly got the previous statute overturned.  Technically, a previous statute was reinstated, but not only did it not protect against partisan raiding, it also set a date that simply doesn't fit the national presidential nomination calendar. 

Second, the Democrats simply aren't going to participate.  Mark Brewer has already announced his support (presumably well-vetted with certain union figures) for a meaningless May caucus for selecting our delegates, all of whom will be pledged to Obama, of course.  Without any Democratic primary contest, the Republicans have no lever to keep Democrats from raiding, as many of us did in 2000 (for McCain) and 2010 (for Snyder).

Third, I have assumed amending the election law to provide for party declaration would prove politically toxic.  I think every newspaper with a circulation above 50,000 denounced last cycle's abortion of a statute, and the public was none too pleased either.

Fourth, the possibility of deferring the decision to the already-elected precinct delegates and county executive board members (as was tried in 1988) would mainly serve to empower the Tea Party folks, who mobilized large numbers of their wackos to put their names on the ballots last August.  So the "moderates" who more or less run the Republican state party won't want to revisit the county convention/state convention route.  (In 1998, it nearly resulted in turning control of the entire state party over to the Pat Robertson folks.  Only months of heroic work spent jimmying the convention rules allowed Spence Abraham to salvage the situation.)

Fifth, and finally, the Republicans simply can't manage a wide-open caucus, a la Iowa. That would require too much organization, and would depend on institutional legitimacy, which is in short supply these days.

I have asked, and asked, and asked how they were going to break out of this mess.  Now, Bill tells us, my third assumption is wrong.  Everybody voting will have so sign something, and a list of who signs what will be preserved and turned over to somebody.  (Last time around, that "somebody" was supposed to be Mark Brewer and Saul Anuzis, and nobody else.  The courts said that wasn't kosher.)

Maybe Bill will prove correct, but I'm having trouble believing it will happen . . .