Badger Paul
04-04-2008, 08:15 AM
Political scientist Josiah Apschultz deatils a simple change in the rules at the 2000 GOP Convention benefitted John McCain this year:"
Here, to whet the reader’s appetite, is the little known rule change that set the stage for the McCain nomination: at its 2000 Convention in Philadelphia the GOP reversed the “order of precedence” in Rule 15 between state party rules and state law. Previously, state law had been the standard for seating a delegation at a GOP convention. State law, in other words, had legal “precedence” over state party rules. But as part of a larger package of rules proposals the GOP reversed this. As a result, beginning in 2004, state Republican parties could set their own delegate selection procedures without getting the state legislature to enact them.
This meant that in strategizing for 2008, Republican parties could choose a winner-take-all system, even in states where the legislatures had enacted the Democratic Party requirement for proportional representation. Most GOP parties went along with the system used by the Democrats. But a few parties in traditionally under-represented East Coast states seized this opportunity to increase their influence. Florida scheduled a winner-take all primary along with a turnout-building real-estate tax referendum in late January. The Middle Atlantic GOP organizations in New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and Delaware went winner-take-all on Super Tuesday. McCain’s Arizona (but not Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts) rounded out the state-wide winner-take-all list. The California and Georgia GOPs chose a Super Tuesday winner-take-all system of pledged delegates on the Congressional district level. Thus, there was a large bloc of delegates—about 50 percent of those needed for nomination—to be decided on a winner-take-all basis on or before February 5.
Winning this mostly moderate bloc was the strategic target of the Giuliani campaign. The Giuliani plan was to leverage a victory in Florida in late January into a favorite-son victory in the Middle Atlantic region and a sweep of the California congressional districts. But as it turned out, it was McCain who built on comeback victories in New Hampshire and South Carolina to win Florida. Giuliani immediately withdrew and endorsed McCain. Governor Schwarzenegger and other party leaders in the winner-take-all states followed suit, handing the Giuliani strategy to McCain on a silver platter. When McCain duly swept all the Super Tuesday winner-take-all primaries save Georgia (and even there he bled twelve district-level delegates from Huckabee to balance a fifteen-delegate leakage to Romney in California), his nomination was effectively assured.
Mitt Romney, who had concentrated on media buys, and Mike Huckabee, who had relied on faith-based grassroots organization, discovered too late that their victories, concentrated in proportional rather than winner-take-all states, could not yield the delegate margins to add up to a nomination.
The seven-state winner-take-all delegate haul thus delivered a quick kill. It does not under-value the force of McCain’s personal appeal, his hero’s resume or his independent character to point out that he was the beneficiary of rules changes not of his own making. The “moderate” result countered the overall thrust of the GOP Rules, which contain numerous technical devices giving disproportionate weight to the smaller, more conservative states of the South and West.
As it happened, the successful strategic device—the leveraging of a large winner-take-all bloc—is precisely the instrument which magnified Ronald Reagan’s “conservative” base in 1976 and 1980. In those years, the California GOP primary was the only one in either party conducted on a winner-take-all basis. It was the largest state bloc of primary delegates ever available to a single candidate in the history of the American convention system. A special provision had to be written into California state law to give Ronald Reagan this unique advantage.
A further ironic twist: Karl Rove, the Bush strategist and McCain nemesis, was widely reported to have intervened to shape 2000 Rules Committee deliberations. If so, he allowed the changed Rule 15 to stand, while the main opposition to the change at the time came from Republicans who had backed McCain over Bush for the 2000 nomination
I should point that California traditionally has been a winner-take-all state in both parties. When Goldwater beate Rockefeller in the 1964 GOP primary in California he got all 86 delegates and thus clinched the GOP nomination.
Here, to whet the reader’s appetite, is the little known rule change that set the stage for the McCain nomination: at its 2000 Convention in Philadelphia the GOP reversed the “order of precedence” in Rule 15 between state party rules and state law. Previously, state law had been the standard for seating a delegation at a GOP convention. State law, in other words, had legal “precedence” over state party rules. But as part of a larger package of rules proposals the GOP reversed this. As a result, beginning in 2004, state Republican parties could set their own delegate selection procedures without getting the state legislature to enact them.
This meant that in strategizing for 2008, Republican parties could choose a winner-take-all system, even in states where the legislatures had enacted the Democratic Party requirement for proportional representation. Most GOP parties went along with the system used by the Democrats. But a few parties in traditionally under-represented East Coast states seized this opportunity to increase their influence. Florida scheduled a winner-take all primary along with a turnout-building real-estate tax referendum in late January. The Middle Atlantic GOP organizations in New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and Delaware went winner-take-all on Super Tuesday. McCain’s Arizona (but not Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts) rounded out the state-wide winner-take-all list. The California and Georgia GOPs chose a Super Tuesday winner-take-all system of pledged delegates on the Congressional district level. Thus, there was a large bloc of delegates—about 50 percent of those needed for nomination—to be decided on a winner-take-all basis on or before February 5.
Winning this mostly moderate bloc was the strategic target of the Giuliani campaign. The Giuliani plan was to leverage a victory in Florida in late January into a favorite-son victory in the Middle Atlantic region and a sweep of the California congressional districts. But as it turned out, it was McCain who built on comeback victories in New Hampshire and South Carolina to win Florida. Giuliani immediately withdrew and endorsed McCain. Governor Schwarzenegger and other party leaders in the winner-take-all states followed suit, handing the Giuliani strategy to McCain on a silver platter. When McCain duly swept all the Super Tuesday winner-take-all primaries save Georgia (and even there he bled twelve district-level delegates from Huckabee to balance a fifteen-delegate leakage to Romney in California), his nomination was effectively assured.
Mitt Romney, who had concentrated on media buys, and Mike Huckabee, who had relied on faith-based grassroots organization, discovered too late that their victories, concentrated in proportional rather than winner-take-all states, could not yield the delegate margins to add up to a nomination.
The seven-state winner-take-all delegate haul thus delivered a quick kill. It does not under-value the force of McCain’s personal appeal, his hero’s resume or his independent character to point out that he was the beneficiary of rules changes not of his own making. The “moderate” result countered the overall thrust of the GOP Rules, which contain numerous technical devices giving disproportionate weight to the smaller, more conservative states of the South and West.
As it happened, the successful strategic device—the leveraging of a large winner-take-all bloc—is precisely the instrument which magnified Ronald Reagan’s “conservative” base in 1976 and 1980. In those years, the California GOP primary was the only one in either party conducted on a winner-take-all basis. It was the largest state bloc of primary delegates ever available to a single candidate in the history of the American convention system. A special provision had to be written into California state law to give Ronald Reagan this unique advantage.
A further ironic twist: Karl Rove, the Bush strategist and McCain nemesis, was widely reported to have intervened to shape 2000 Rules Committee deliberations. If so, he allowed the changed Rule 15 to stand, while the main opposition to the change at the time came from Republicans who had backed McCain over Bush for the 2000 nomination
I should point that California traditionally has been a winner-take-all state in both parties. When Goldwater beate Rockefeller in the 1964 GOP primary in California he got all 86 delegates and thus clinched the GOP nomination.