You should need the signatures of 8 party leaders.
When I look at the Republican Presidential debates I wonder, “Who vetted these people?” The answer of course is nobody, which is scandalous. I propose that if you want to be on the Florida primary ballot for example, you should need to be nominated by 8 leaders in your party. If you can’t do that, you are pathetic: you don’t represent any meaningful wing of the party. This would eliminate distractions and provide some accountability. I don’t doubt that Rick Perry or Newt Gingrich could overcome such a hurdle. But those who publicly climbed aboard their bandwagon would be subject to sanction by their peers and ridicule by the rest of us.
The nomination form, to be submitted after June of the year prior to the general election, would state something like the following:
I hereby nominate Candidate X for the Republican primary ballot of State Y. I have spoken with Candidate X and am convinced that he is fully qualified to be President of the United States. That’s it. It’s not even an endorsement. You are just saying they are qualified.
Boring Details: [ul]
[li] US Representatives, US Senators, US Governors and State Majority and Minority leaders within the Republican Party would be eligible to nominate up to one candidate. [/li][li] Candidates will need 8 nominations.[/li][li] Up to four can be from a single state. This prevents candidates from large states having too much of an edge. [/li][li] Up to four can be state level majority or minority leaders. This means you need at least 4 from Washington or from the group of Governors. [/li][/ul] What about outsiders? Well, outsiders can either start a PAC which would ensure they can get the requisite number of signatures. Or they can run as a 3rd party candidate.
What about the Democrats? Should they have similar requirements? Yes.
What about New Hampshire and Iowa? They won’t go along with this, because they benefit economically from the circus. I’m not sure about South Carolina. But other states shouldn’t have a problem.
What about Nebraska, which has a unicameral state legislature? Give them 2 qualified party leaders anyway, for example the party whip.
Do I think this proposal will make a difference? No. But it might present a small or large hurdle to candidates unlike Romney or Huntsman.
Do you really think this would have made any difference? I’m pretty sure that Trump or Cain could have gotten all eight signatures, and I’m certain the rest of them could with ease. I mean, they were able to get endorsements, which are a much bigger deal.
…in which case the nominators would look foolish when their candidate imploded embarrassingly. Politicos don’t like to appear foolish.
Plus, I’m not sure that Trump or Cain could get those signatures, at least without forming a PAC.
FWIW, here’s a table of endorsements, from Wikipedia:
Cumulative endorsements
As of 20 January 2012 Candidate Endorsement By:
Governor Senate House Total
Michele Bachmann (withdrawn) 0 0 1 1
Herman Cain (withdrawn) 0 0 1 1
Jon Huntsman, Jr. (withdrawn) 0 0 1 1
Tim Pawlenty (withdrawn) 0 0 3 3
Rick Santorum 0 0 3 3
Ron Paul 0 1 2 3
Newt Gingrich 2 0 9 11
Rick Perry (withdrawn) 3 1 12 16
Mitt Romney 7 14 51 72
Note the paucity of endorsements for Ron Paul et al. If nothing else, it seems to me that a lot of candidates don’t especially even care about the party’s support. The proposal would increment us in the direction of the smoked room model, which I favor.
Incidentally, a lot of Perry’s support came from Texas, so his totals are a little misleading.
Shouldn’t primary voters be the people who decide whether a candidate should receive the nomination? Maybe some per-state method (let each state decide) that counts, say, signatures of primary voters to consider their eligibility to be on that state’s ballot. I’m not sure that would be workable though…
No. Questions of electability should be left to party professionals. And there should be pre-screening for basic competence. I acknowledge that my proposed screening will be inadequate. But in that case there will be a cost for admitting bozos to the national stage.
That’s the status quo. To get on the ballot you need a bunch of within state signatures.
Voters should have the opportunity of choosing between broad approaches to governance. (Actually, I think they should have more than that, but proportional representation is off-topic). Asking them to balance electability, ideology and umpteen other factors is a bit much.
Don’t get me wrong though. The Republican’s problem is structural: you need to either be a crazy or simulate one on TV to get the nomination: neuro-typicals like Huntsman need not apply. My proposal does nothing to address this underlying situation.
On Preview: Newt would have jumped the hurdle. Perry might have too. Cain and even Bachmann and Trump would have had more problems. Once you make something like this into a requirement, it gets more attention and picking a transparent incompetent could lead to consequences for the nominators.
Point of order: Is the one endorsement Bachmann got her own? She is one of your valid endorsers herself, you know.
And each and every one of these folks has been the Tea Party favorite at some point or another before the primaries, and there are plenty of Tea Partiers in Congress. Folks hold off on an official endorsement because they only have one, and they want to see which way the wind is blowing first, but if they can vouch for as many candidates they like, then as soon as one’s popular with their constituencies, they’ll sign off on them with a big photo-op. Nor will they worry about looking foolish a few months down the line, because they’ll be counting on the American people having short attention spans.
That would hold if questions of electability were questions of fact, not opinion–as are questions of “basic competence” (limited and absurd exceptions acknowledged). I’m one of those hoping Newt doesn’t win the nomination because there’s a non-zero chance he will win the Presidency. And there are lots of Newt supporters out there that think he does have a good shot at the election, and they–the people who make up the party–should decide who gets on the nominating ballot.
Further, the primary season winnowing process shapes overall debate and the affects the policy choices of the ultimate nominee. Forcing the tea party to choose between Romney and whoever else the party establishment feel qualified (all the while assuming they’d make the choice based on electability and competence with no political favours in mind) silences their voice and diminishes their impact on Republican priorities. While I utterly reject most of their platform and do recognize that they seem to have a disproportionate influence on the process, I nonetheless find removing that voice to be a greater harm to democratic processes.
According to wikipedia, she was endorsed by Trent Franks of Arizona, who has since shifted his support to Newt Gingrich.
That’s… mostly true. I’m hoping it’s not entirely true.
I disagree with regards to basic competence: the idea is to make the supporters of Perry (actually a plausible choice given his resume) pause before jumping in. Somebody should have some explaining to do. As for electability, I’d say that Nate Silver, Charlie Cook and ok Newt Gingrich in most cases have a better idea than MfM, since they are pros and I am not. Seriously, it’s a ludicrous consideration to hand to even a reasonably involved citizen.
The point is not to curb the Tea Party. If I wanted to curb them, I’d demand 100 signatures. I’m saying if you can’t pull together 8 sigs out of a group of 375, you don’t have any business representing the Republican Party. My greater concern is that the effects of my proposal would be de minimus, which is arguable. I not anticipating large results. At least it’s straightforward to implement: if as few as a handful of state parties granted approval, it would become a necessity for any candidate pretending to be serious.
That’s not a question of order. You want to raise a Question of Privilege or if limiting it to Bachmann only it would be the variation of a Point of Personal Privilege.
To get on primaries in most states, the voters get to vet you, either through the collection of signatures or support of a caucus. I’d rather the voters of the party be the determining factor and not the party leaders.
To the extent that we have a problem here, I don’t see how this solves it.
The GOP has, three times in a row now, nominated men for the Presidency who were clearly not up for the job: GWB in 2000 and 2004, who was such a disaster that he’s practically He Who Must Not Be Named among the current GOP field; and in 2008 they nominated McCain, who’s always been the sort of maverick who couldn’t run a two-car parade, and had already gotten old and angry by that point. And we can’t forget his single big decision as potential President: his choice of Sarah Palin to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency.
My point isn’t to revivify any debate over the merits of those two bozos, so much as to point out that both of them would have cleared this hurdle by a mile or two.
Yeah, the parties aren’t entrenched enough, so we need to make sure they are really, really entrenched. Those pesky outsiders are getting much to uppity these days.
That big problem will not be solved. This proposal is directed against the distractions: curbing core crazy would take a more muscular approach. This is a small do-able fix for a smaller problem. It’s directed against the Cains, Bachmanns and Trumps of the world. Whether it even curbs them however is admittedly questionable. The test would come after a bozo gets on the ballot: then we would see whether any of his party supporters suffered sanction. Upthread Chronos had his doubts.
John Mace presents the populist position. I disagree with it. I don’t think Herman Cain or Donald Trump made a significant contribution to the debate. JM apparently disagrees.
Moreover, I contend that the set of candidates nominated by the smoke filled room were superior to the primary crowd: Carter, Reagan, Dukakis and GWBush were inferior candidates.[1] Furthermore there’s nothing undemocratic about having the party insiders choose their best candidate, then having the populace choose between 2 philosophies in November. That’s the way they do it in the rest of the democratic world after all.
[1] Yes, this is pretty contentious, as we are comparing 2 imperfect systems.