Moe Lane

Tell me again why we let certain states go early?

• The results from Iowa’s caucuses were within the state GOP’s margin of incompetence, leading to a result where Mitt Romney was able to claim the largely symbolic win over Rick Santorum (truthfully, it was a tie either way, but headlines don’t care).
• The South Carolina establishment reminded us, yet again, that they smear raw sewage on the knives before they put them in candidates’ backs.  Every year we think: Gee, they can’t go any lower.  Every year, they surprise us.
• And now we have Nevada.  Nevada has a caucus.  Nevada had less than 33K votes to count in that caucus.  It took them a day – and if you’re wondering what the delay was, save yourself some trouble and just pick a random plausible-sounding screw-up, because it probably happened anyway.

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In 2008, the Democratic party had one of the longest, one of the most expensive, and one of the most bitter primaries in American political history.  It was a drawn-out, unpleasant affair where Hillary Clinton, the expected front-runner, was eventually beaten – despite the fact that she won almost all of the top Democratic-leaning states, arguably won the popular vote, and nobody actually won enough pledged delegates to win outright.  Insurgent candidate Barack Obama then, of course, proceeded to win the general election handily, pretty much none the worse for wear for the grind.

Please note that I am not directly comparing any of the Republican candidates* for President to Barack Obama; such a thing would be incredibly cruel to President Obama, who has under-performed in office in precisely the way that one would expect of a liberal academic with no executive experience whatsoever and a legislative ‘record’ that consisted of faithfully voting where, when, and how he was told.  What I am doing is noting that I for one am not terrified of having a long, drawn-out, and expensive Republican primary.  Admittedly, I may end up being in the minority in this one – it wouldn’t be the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last – and, honestly, the decision isn’t mine to make.  If the candidates don’t decide to fight it out, there’s not much I can do in response.  (more…)

If so, the luxury of taking one’s time with picking a favorite GOP candidate is about to go away:

In a bombshell this afternoon, New Hampshire Secretary of State William Gardner raised the strong possibility of a December first-in-the-nation presidential primary.

In a statement entitled “Why New Hampshire’s Primary Tradition is Important,” Gardner, who has full authority under state law to set the date of the presidential primary, called Dec. 13 and Dec. 6 “realistic options.”

New Hampshire is blaming Nevada, which has decided to move its GOP primary up to January 14th, largely because Nevada is tired of having Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina always be first in the primary schedule.  New Hampshire wants Nevada to push it back to January 17th, and Nevada’s saying that it won’t, and at least one candidate – who isn’t Mitt Romney* – is totally taking New Hamphire’s side, and… OK, look, it’s high school all over again, you understand?  God help me for having to describe this dispute in such terms, but it’s the best analogy that fits.

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Let me explain this one: there’s a debate Thursday that’s being sponsored by FoxNews & Google.  Google is letting people submit questions via YouTube – frankly, this has more than a slight whiff of gimmick about it, but let’s roll with the notion for a moment.  The preliminary survey of submitted questions indicate that the top two categories of questions submitted are “Government Spending” and Debt (17%) and “Jobs & Economy” (16%), with “Social Issues” (12%) and “Energy and Environment” (9%) being the next two.  By my calculations, that means that roughly 54% of the questions being submitted involve one of those four topics, which I think that we can all agree are legitimately of interest to Republican voters, yes?

Well, WE HAVE YET TO HAVE A 2012 REPUBLICAN PRIMARY DEBATE WHERE FIFTY-FOUR PERCENT OF THE QUESTIONS WERE LEGITIMATELY OF INTEREST TO REPUBLICAN VOTERS.  We have, instead, had inane questions at worst and invitations to intra-debate sniping at best. I for one am getting tired of it.  And, apparently, I’m not the only one, either. (more…)

…that means it’s time to deal with the issue that has the most lopsided PiTA/True Relevance ratio in American political theory.  I refer, of course, to the annual battle over who gets to have their primary first:

In the final days before states submit their primary and caucus plans to the Republican National Committee, the GOP is sweating bullets over the possibility that a gang of rogue states could still wreak havoc on the 2012 presidential nominating process.

One state, Arizona, has already announced that it will violate RNC rules and hold its primary on February 28 – a full week before joint RNC-Democratic National Committee rules permit states to do so. Michigan’s legislature is also moving toward scheduling its vote for the same date.

Then there’s Florida, a repeat offender when it comes to calendar mischief, which has empaneled a committee to choose an election date that’s expected to fall before the RNC-sanctioned date of March 6.

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Possibly the Obama campaign wants me to have that reaction, which was based on the news that they’ve released the total number of donors to date (just under 500,000) rather than the total amount collected in the second quarter.  The campaign did so enjoy playing the expectations game in 2008.  But what the heck: if it’s a trap, let me charge forward and trigger it anyway. (more…)

“…Republican primaries conclude today!”

Well, there’s still Hawaii and the Louisiana runoffs, but the rest of them cook off today – and, given the way that the Delaware primary now resembles a duel with flamethrowers, is a very, very, very good thing. Much longer, and the conflict would wreck roughly two years’ worth of patient activist networking. As it stands, there’s been a lot of what was frankly avoidable damage done to people’s reputations and effectiveness, and it’s only gotten more Amateur Hour as the deadline looms*. If this sounds slightly irritated of me, it is: I was very much looking forward to starting tomorrow with a happy, innocent grin on my face as I contemplated all the awful things that we’re going to be doing to Democratic incumbents in November. Instead, I’m mildly worrying about what media fallout from the Delaware race is going to do to the Toomey campaign in Pennsylvania and a couple of possible pickups in New Jersey.

No, people need to think about that sort of thing when they’re participating in a national party system. Those who don’t want to consider the implications of their actions on fellow-Republicans are perfectly welcome to try to win races on their own…

Moe Lane (more…)

According to RCP, we’ve got primaries in California, Iowa, Maine, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Virginia.  The news has been dominated by California’s, Nevada’s, and of course South Carolina’s – but they’re all important, so if you’re a voter in that state, hie yourselves and any reliable Republican voters within reach to a polling station.  You can let the Democrats in your life sleep in, particularly in New Jersey and Virginia.

Also: KEEP YOUR VIDEO CAMERAS HANDY, PARTICULARLY IF YOU LIVE IN SOUTH CAROLINA.  Anti-reform opponents of Nikki Haley and Bill Connor may be now past the point where their shenanigans can shape public opinion in time for the actual primary election, but there’s plenty of things that you can do to illicitly affect an election.  Fortunately, sunlight is an excellent disinfectant – and, remember: as Mark Steyn notes here, Helen Thomas was taken down by a flipcam.  There’s a reason that both Instapundit and I keep harping on this…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Not to contradict Glenn Reynolds, but this report of the Democrats going ahead with plans to make it impossible for an upstart into do in 2012 what Senator Obama did to Senator Clinton in 2008 won’t offend President Obama at all.  The President is the incumbent now, after all: he doesn’t want superdelegates and spaced-out primaries (and probably caucuses, soon enough) interfering with his inexorable progression through the nomination process.  That’s what I concluded back in June, and I see nothing here that would encourage me to change my opinion.

Shorter Moe Lane:  Hi, I’d like you to meet the new boss.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Hey, I’m honest enough to admit when I’m wrong about something – and although I could weasel out of this, I won’t: it is clear from context here that my expectations were that the Democratic party would redesign their Presidential primary system (to prevent someone doing unto the President as he did unto Clinton) at some point in 2010.  Well, that was flat-out wrong of me, and I’m sorry that I called it so badly.  It wasn’t going to start within a year at all.

It was actually going to start within three days. (more…)

Some time in the next year or so, the rules will be quietly changed so as to ensure that the power gaming techniques used by the current President to win the Democratic nomination in 2008 cannot be used against him in 2012. It’ll be straight primaries, winner take all, no more convoluted delegate allocation methods.

Second prediction: it will be touted as a ‘reform.’

Moe Lane

PS: If this comes true, feel free to reward me as a prophet by hitting the tip jar. Heck, hit it anyway.

Crossposted to RedState.