Omnibus GOP Primary ThreadFollow

While Texas complicates things, the GOP did change their primary system this cycle. Traditionally, each state was winner-takes-all. The GOP decided that any state having its primary before April 1st would be proportionally divided in delegates. Those after April 1 could go winner-takes-all. This was done because some people felt that McCain won too quickly last cycle and they would have done better with a more conservative candidate. Ironically, now we have two conservatives (according to the voters anyway) splitting the vote and letting the "not-conservative" take the nomination. Best laid plans...

As the for the delegate division thing, some states are getting around it in various ways. Some have had "non-binding" caucuses where, realistically, the delegates will be given to whoever won the caucus. Florida just said "fuck you" and moved its primary to when it felt like and declared it winner-takes-all.

So.... Given that Romney has a nearly identical delegate percentage relative to the rest of the field compared to McCain, shouldn't that suggest that he's an even stronger candidate? Fewer winner takes all states early in the race, right? Given his much better state-win record, we should assume he would be doing much much better in terms of delegates at this point. Still confirms my point IMO.




Ironic only if you accept your stated reasoning and play some games with the definition of "more conservative". I'm quite sure if someone else were leading, you'd be parroting the folks on your TV who told you that he was the "non-conservative" in the race. Makes the irony kinda meaningless when you can twist the definitions and labels after the fact to make it seem ironic no matter what's actually happening.


They wanted to produce the strongest candidate possible. They wanted to avoid short term opinion swings from having large effects on delegate count and thus the nominated candidate. And they wanted more media attention to their candidates and their process. And frankly, the changes have worked pretty much as advertised. There have been a few swings over the course of the process, but they have not had the same impact as they might have had in a more impacted season. Gingrich got a massive bump in popularity after the CNN debate question about his ex wife, but it only equated to one win because there was only one primary within a week of that happening. In a more compressed season, instead of just winning SC, he might have picked up 4 or 5 states from just that bump. Similarly, Santorum got a decent bump right when he swept three otherwise minor states. But that bump didn't last even to the next round of primaries.


It changes the strategy quite a bit. The traditional strategy is to time a bump right before a big primary day, use that bump to win several states, and then ride the fact that you just won a bunch of states on to win even more. It's all about timing that swing and the whole nomination often hinges on a single event. With the more protracted primary season it's about consistent performance. The voters are given more time between events and state contests to consider the whole picture and not just the emotions of the moment. This produces a better result IMO. Slow and steady wins the race, not a well timed bump.

Romney is winning because when conservatives take the time to think things through, he's the obvious candidate to go against Obama.



To be fair, several states have done this (to some degree). Or they have proportional delegate assignment that is so heavily swung towards the winner that it's pretty much a winner takes all anyway. But also, there were a number like that last time around as well. Winner takes all doesn't always mean winner takes all. It just means "most" a lot of the time.

Fair to anyone who might disagree with my own statements. I made an argument that the changes in delegate rules (specifically the winner-takes-all rules) has acted as a disadvantage to Romney and that given the number of states he'd won he would have an even larger delegate lead if the same rules were in effect as last time around. This means that he's arguably a much stronger candidate than he appears by delegate count (and he's pretty strong by that measure already).

But ... to be fair, several states have found ways around the rule changes *and* not all the states used a winner-takes-all system last time around. When I did the delegate tallies earlier, there were a lot of (semi) proportional states in that first 29 state contests. I don't feel like sitting here and calculating ratios and whatnot, but I figured I'd be "fair" and point out that it's not as much of a night and day change as one might think.


Re-reading it, I acknowledge that it wasn't completely clear what I was talking about. Hopefully, that clarifies things.

Edited, Mar 12th 2012 7:11pm by gbaji

Well, that narrows the field down.

Nonsense. If you take Gingrich's wins and give them to Romney, he's doing better than Reagan!

Blah blah blah hive mind blah blah blah. If you're not going to think for yourself, I'm not going to waste time either.

How much and what you hear depends on the media coverage though, doesn't it? Of course some member of the GOP are going to talk about this candidate, or that candidate. That's part of any primary season. The issue is how the media covers that, and what focus it puts on different angles. The media story has been "Romney can't get it done" for at least 6 months now (longer really). So any talk by anyone about other candidates is presented to the audience within that context.



*cough*. They choose who to interview. Think about it.



Lol. Those who believe Romney is the best candidate to represent the GOP in the presidential race (which is a large majority of conservatives), are ignoring what the media is saying and voting for Romney, and frankly standing around wondering why the hell every media story about Romney is about how poorly he's doing even though he's winning resoundingly in the actual primaries. The point isn't about whether fringe folks oppose Romney (as your "last vestiges of think-for-yourselfers") would suggest. It's that the media is painting this as though the majority doesn't support Romney, and that Romney isn't doing well, or that he should be doing better, or a dozen different takes on this that all seem to bear no resemblance at all to the reality of the contest.



Look at the numbers. Forget the media coverage. Ignore the names. If I were to show you just the numbers, absent names, would you honestly think anything other than "hey. That guys kicking everyone else's butt!"? I seriously doubt it. And if you honestly looked at the numbers, you'd have to conclude the same. Why? Because he is kicking everyone's butt.

Every time Gbaji posts in this thread, this is what i see:

ALL IS WELL!

Offered without comment: RMoney came in third in Alabama and Mississippi tonight.

Hey, coming in third out of four places is astoundingly well.

Oh, ouch...

Am I missing something? Why would they do this?

There's grumbling that Rutherford wants to run for IL governor in a couple years and doesn't want to upset any GOP voting blocs.