This is disappointing:
If Walker is the guy I hope he is (I’ve been a booster), he won’t just have to take on his enemies, he’ll have to take on his friends, too (something Cruz, Paul and even Jeb can claim to have done). Isn’t that the point of the anti-establishment movement on the right? That reform starts with reforming how we run our own affairs? Well if there’s a more obvious hive of cronyism in the GOP than the Iowa ethanol racket, I’d like to hear about it.
I get that Walker needs to win Iowa and that staffers aren’t more important than the candidate. But principles are. If Walker didn’t want a critic of the Iowa caucuses on his payroll he shouldn’t have hired one. But he did. And throwing her under the bus for this, suggests not only that he’s got some problems getting ready for prime time, it also suggests he can get rolled by the Iowa GOP establishment. What happens when he gets to Washington?
Good question. I think it really is true that the only reason the disgusting ethanol subsidy persists is because of the irrational notion that the Iowa caucuses should have an outsized influence on the nomination.
[Update later morning]
More thoughts from Stephen Kruiser.
Why is Iowa so crucial? Santorum won in 2012 and Huckabee won in 2008. A win in Iowa isn’t a guarantee of primary victory.
In fact, as a rule (and as with any rule there are exceptions) winning Iowa has been the kiss of death for any candidate except, of course, an incumbent.
Yet finishing second, or even third, in Iowa seems to correlate pretty well with winning the nomination.
I think it’s because (1) winning in Iowa has become an exercise in big, early money and stormtrooper-like organization, which doesn’t correlate to doing well in the primary states, especially New Hampshire, and (2) the media and the also-rans always concentrate their fire on the frontrunner who, until New Hampshire, is whoever won in Iowa.
And (3), the also-rans therefore get a pass and can focus on NH instead of defending against the attacks.
Jon,
Perhaps the thinking is that if you are not one of the Establishment candidates, then you need some extra momentum at the start to overcome the barrier the Establishment puts up.
It would be interesting to see how many candidates who:
1) Lost Iowa
2) Were not the Establishment Candidate
got the nomination
It’s kind of late in the game to get all fussy about what someone with a proven record of dismantling large portions of the Democratic party machine does to get elected. Constitutional conservatives are in a knife fight with progressives to whom lies and payoffs are the default modes of operation. As a smart Rabbi once told me, the measure of the virtue of a person has to include the context of that person’s culture and era.
The Left has already compared a certain Midwestern Governor to a certain Austrain Army Corporal, but maybe they are using that awful analogy because they are suffering terrible defeats at his hand.
Annex Austria? Check.
Dismember Czechoslovakia? Check.
Cut a deal to divide Poland? Check.
Conquer France? Check.
Neutralize England? Conquer Russia? Extricate oneself from Russia? Extricate oneself from France? Exploit the contradictions between Stalin and the West to sue for peace when those operations all turn sour? I guess that is where the boldness that comes with being an Army Corporal fails you.
The Army Corporal (let’s call him Mr. Bonaparte — it is the same principle) achieves great initial success because he doesn’t know all the things “you just cannot do” or “will just not work” because he is not bound by, dunno, what you learn by completing a college degree, in graduate school, or in the Officers’ War College.
You have your brilliant, audacious initial successes doing everything your elders and betters told you not to do. OK, what happens next? This is why we scrutinize all of the putative Presidential candidates.
I want to add another item to that list.
Ingratiate your self with the Ukranians.
Do we or any of the candidates we favor know how to do this?
By Ukranians, I am offering a metaphor and not talking about present or past Ukraine, directly.
Work with me, people. Who are the Ukrainians? Could they be, dunno, white, male, working-class voters? You know, the Archie Bunkers of the world, people who have been mocked for their unenlightened attitude towards minorities, but people who have fared even worse under Democratic management than Republican?
Teaching the teachers’ unions a lesson is one thing, but Right-to-Work? Blah, blah, Libertarian theories of labor and individual freedom, blah, blah, but is this invading Ukraine followed by oppressing the Ukranians, who welcomed you with open arms, worse than Moscow (your unition) did?
It is all a non issue to me, and will be a non issue for pretty much everyone else within a month. The staffer made herself a distraction. How he handled her is hardly a comparison of how he would deal with Washington critics.
Agreed. The current brouhaha is mostly coming from people who are too “Beltway” in their thinking, despite claiming they want a non-Beltway candidate.
I have often wondered why Iowa being first in the nation is so critical.
Why not have a system that rewards higher per capita support for the given party. If Alaska votes 100% for a party’s nominee in the last Presidential election – Alaska should be the first state in a party’s next primary.
Then the states lost by a party wouldn’t have as large an impact on picking the next nominee.
“If Alaska votes 100% for a party’s nominee in the last Presidential election – Alaska should be the first state in a party’s next primary.”
From a purely administrative standpoint, it’s enough of a pain to plan and run an election when you know the dates years in advance. And while the parties have gotten in the habit recently of moving around their Presidential Primaries, some states hold their Presidential Primary at the same time as their other Federal, State, and Local primaries. If you start moving the Presidential Primaries based on previous per capita support for a nominee, do states with concurrent primaries more the other primaries along with it? You may find yourself running afoul of State Code in many cases if that were attempted.
In states with separate primaries for the president and the House/Senate, the taxpayers are footing the bill each time they head to the booth, all because the Party doesn’t want to foot the bill themselves. Frankly, I’m fine with Iowa having Caucuses, since it limits the waste of taxpayer dollars on what is essentially party business and internal discussion.
Ultimately, the presidential primaries/caucuses are run by the party, for the party, so blame the party leadership if you want to know why some states come before others.
And why does the State pay for the primary elections? It is party business, not State business. I agree with you that the party should pay for their own primaries.
Of course this is a pie-in-the-sky discussion as the parties are more than happy to have the State fund (and schedule) the various primaries.
I have never seen a State punished for violating the party scheduling procedures . . . and it probably wouldn’t be good politics any way.
On the one hand I like the idea of putting states which more strongly support a party early and more influential in that party’s primary process. On the other hand there are logistical complications. One gotcha is if a party primary is on a date other than a general primary election, it skews turnout, which can be a huge deal if there’s an important voter initiative on the ballot.
On the whole I’d rather party primaries dropped plurality elections, which really don’t work well for more than 2 competitive candidates.
Presidential primaries assign convention delegates, mostly in proportion to the vote total. In many states non-presidential primaries have a threshold (50% in Georgia, for example) to avoid a runoff.
Of course, federal voting rules seem to be working deliberately to discourage runoff elections for congressional seats…
“Of course, federal voting rules seem to be working deliberately to discourage runoff elections for congressional seats…”
I assume that, by this, you mean UOCAVA, given the recent federal ruling on Georgia’s and Alabama’s primaries? Georgia fixed that by moving their primary earlier in the year and the suit was dropped.
Of course, if they went to a 35% threshold like Iowa and some other states, instead of 50%, that would change things, too, or get rid of the runoff and use county/state conventions to decide nominees.
Here in Fl-Iowa-over Country, a state politician who won a plurality in his Congressional primary (but under 35%), lost the nomination when it went to convention. I guess he wasn’t popular enough with the right number of grandmothers? In any case, he introduced a bill to mandate Primary Runoffs instead of leaving it up to a Convention. More than a few people have already labeled it the Sour Grapes Bill, but it has traction for some reason. Of course, it violates UOCAVA the same as Georgia and Alabama did, but that doesn’t seem to faze anyone involved.
It’s internal party politics. Unless the parties are going to foot the bill for the runoff election, conventions seem to have worked just fine for a number of years.
As a rather funny aside (well, not really funny, but indicative of the prowess of those crafting the bill), the bill also has no provisions for a party to leave the November race uncontested if there are only write-ins during the Primary (which happens frequently in heavily blue or heavily red counties).
Regarding Iowa’s voting record in picking a President:
“Going back to 1976, the Iowa GOP has hosted seven competitive presidential caucuses: 1976, 1980, 1988, 1996, 2000, 2008, and 2012. They picked the next president once, in 2000, making them a whopping 1-for-7.
Iowa Republicans are not even particularly adept at selecting the eventual Republican nominee when the race is competitive. They got it wrong in 1980 (Iowa Republicans wanted George H. W. Bush, not Ronald Reagan). They got it wrong in 1988 (they wanted Bob Dole, not George H. W. Bush). They got it wrong in 2008 (they wanted Mike Huckabee). And they got it wrong again in 2012 (Rick Santorum won by a hair over Mitt Romney).
So to recap: Iowa has voted for a Republican presidential nominee in November exactly once in the last 30 years (in 2004), and Iowa Republicans have nominated the next president exactly once in the last 30 years (in 2000). This is not exactly the kind of batting average you expect from your leadoff hitter.”
And regarding the silliness of the kerfluffle:
“Iowa is in the news this week not because a candidate did or said something crazy, but because Iowa Republicans are upset about a candidate’s personnel decision. They’re not upset that a candidate picked a bad staffer. They’re not upset that a candidate picked a bad policy whisperer. They’re upset that Scott Walker picked a firm to help with social media outreach whose principal, Liz Mair, has been critical of Iowa in the past. The head of the Iowa GOP demanded that Walker fire her immediately, and it appears that Mair resigned early Wednesday morning.
It wasn’t enough that Walker flip-flopped on ethanol to gain the favor of the ethanol lobby. Now he and all the other candidates are apparently required to run all their staffing and contractor decisions by the head of a party that’s only delivered the state to Republicans once in the last 30 years.”
The above is from:
http://thefederalist.com/2015/03/18/sorry-iowa-you-should-have-to-earn-the-top-primary-spot-from-now-on/