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GOP Contemplates Ditching First-in-the-Nation Primary

by: Dean Barker

Fri Nov 20, 2009 at 22:18:14 PM EST
CNN:
An RNC panel headed by party chairman Michael Steele invited the campaigns to share their views as it considers numerous possible changes to the process the party will use to nominate a candidate to challenge President Barack Obama in 2012.

Mike DuHaime, the 2008 campaign manager for former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, told the panel that the three early states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina should continue to hold contests early in the process, but not necessarily as the first three contests.

"I believe there needs to be greater decision-making authority given to states beyond the early states," said DuHaime, referring to Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. "If you win two out of three states, those have been our nominees. With that, 47 other states don't have the same say."

This, after Clinton and Obama battled it out in 2008 all over the map.

Can we just be honest and cut to the chase as to what this is really all about?

NH-Primary (GOP), 2008
McCain   88,713   37%
Romney   75,675   32%
Huckabee   26,916   11%
Giuliani   20,344   8%
Paul   18,346   8%
A noun, a verb, and 9/11 couldn't even get two thousand more votes in New Hampshire than Ron Paul.  And despite their spin, it wasn't for lack of trying.
Dean Barker :: GOP Contemplates Ditching First-in-the-Nation Primary
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GOP Contemplates Ditching First-in-the-Nation Primary | 7 comments
Killing the New Hampshire primary is critical to (4.00 / 1)
the extreme right's complete takeover of the GOP. Their favorite national candidates do not succeed here, in part because Independents can take a pink ballot on primary day. (That arguably means a candidate better able to win in November, but that is not the main goal of the ideologues.)

If you were Palin's campaign strategists, you would be working to ensure NH is not first in 2012.

Does Old John have the influence or even desire to protect it?

Rudy Guiliani: Exploiting 9/11 since 9/12 (4.00 / 6)

Since We Have A Law... (4.00 / 3)
...requiring our Secretary of State to set our primary "...7 days or more..." before any other similar election, we'll be first in 2012 and 2016 and beyond.  We pay for our primary, and we can hold it whenever we want.  No other state nor the national parties have figured out a way to pre-date our primary since our "first primary" law was enacted in the mid-1970s, and they have certainly tried.  We're okay, despite what the national Republicans may try to do.  The party bosses don't tell New Hampshire when to hold our primary.

What we need to continue to do, however, is make sure the candidates keep on coming here so that our primary will continue to be relevant.  That John McCain bypassed Iowa in the 2008 cycle made our event even more important this time, but it also reminded us that candidates themselves decide where to run.  With that in mind, as long as we continue to have the largest voter turnout in the nation, AND we continue to show that we welcome all the candidates who come here, AND we ask intelligent questions and engage them one-to-one, face-to-face, eye-to-eye, they'll keep coming.

And the media will follow.  

My preference is for campaign managers to be banished (4.00 / 1)
from the process and, if not that, permanently silenced from contributing their self-serving opinions.
The problem isn't New Hampshire... (4.00 / 1)
...the problem is the GOP's preponderance of winner-take-all primaries. It was winner-take-all that made so many Republican candidates unviable so quickly in 2008.  
Well, that and the whole "preponderance of unviable candidates" thing. n/t (0.00 / 0)

[ Parent ]
This really doesn't seem to be an option in either party at the moment. (4.00 / 1)
The comments emerging from the September meeting of the Temporary Delegate Selection Committee indicated that the RNC is not even considering stripping Iowa or New Hampshire of their first in the nation status.  Both the RNC and DNC (through the Democratic Change Commission*) are intent on changing the timing on when everyone else goes in 2012.  The battle behind the rules this time concerns avoiding the problems of 2008; mainly preventing other states from moving up, thus forcing Iowa and New Hampshire to consider unpalatable positions (from the perspective of the national parties).

DuHaime was invited to speak at the meeting in Washington this past week and not surprisingly provided a Giuliani-centric view of how the rules "should" be.  But the RNC is not contemplating this move.  Sure, they may talk about a radical revision of the delegate selection rules, and the primary process generally, but it is decreasingly likely that this will happen and threaten New Hampshire's position.

*For their part, the Democratic Change Commission is focused on starting the process later.  They have a tentative rule change in place that will prevent any non-exempt states (everyone but IA, NH, NV and SC) from going any earlier than the first week in March.  

GOP Contemplates Ditching First-in-the-Nation Primary | 7 comments
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