Reminder: Tomorrow there's a "makeup" caucus in Missouri, after the state GOP deliberately vacated the state's own set primary back in February (in order to avoid losing half their delegates for jumping early). Rick Santorum won that "beauty contest" primary pretty handily, with 55.2% of the votes.
Can someone please explain to me how this calendar works? So, I think it's like: Missouri was bound by law to hold an election, but in order to not lose half their delegates, they made a separate caucus to take place later (tomorrow), but then the caucus seats won't be ratified or something until late April. Right?
As long as "caucuses" and "unbound delegates" exist, I have to wonder why even bother having an election. Fuck, if I was a party chairman, I'd want to go to a straight primary, just so my party doesn't look like a bunch of idiots when we don't have an answer for who's actually winning.
Bingo. Here's the situation as I understand it: Several months ago when all the state Republican parties were playing "who can cut in front of the line the most?", an impressionable young Missouri GOP thought it sounded like fun and moved their primary up to early February. Finally, when we were facing the specter of Iowa and New Hampshire moving their caucus/primary into
December of the previous year, the RNC said, "Okay, this is bullshit. Anbody other than Iowa and New Hampshire that holds their primary before Super Tuesday, we're gonna bitchslap half the delegates out of you."
Most of the "claim jumper" states said, "Nuh uh, you're not the boss of me!" and stayed where they were and got bitchslapped. But Missouri got scared and said "Oh...okay, we'd better move back to mid-March then."
Enter the Democrat-controlled state legislature and Democrat Governor, who said "Oh...gee, I dunno...that's an awful lot of work for the Board of Elections to go reschedule their vacations and stuff...I think you're going to have to ask us nicely." So the Republicans introduced a bill to move the primary back to March, and the Democrats laughed and said "Nope! Enjoy your bitchslap, noobs!"
So in desperation to avoid the bitchslap, the Missouri GOP said "Okay, we're only having a primary in February because state law forces us to! Don't hurt us! We're not going to pay any attention to the results, and we'll hold a caucus in March instead to pick the delegates."
The national GOP was pacified by the sacrifice, and withheld its bitchslap.
And that's how we got to this state of affairs. I hadn't heard anything about a late April anything, but shit...the way this thing has played out so far, I wouldn't be surprised.
Now here's the interesting bit: if all the local caucuses decide they're going to abide by the February result, it can be argued that they really
did hold a meaningful primary prior to the penalty-mark deadline. If things get super-tight, I could see Team Romney arguing to the RNC that Missouri should be penalized half its delegates on that basis, which would cut Santorum's total and slightly reduce the overall total needed to hit 50% (by about 11-12 delegates, if I'm right). Wouldn't THAT be a hoot.
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Topic: American Election Megathread - It's Over (Read 769727 times)