2008 101: a Republican primer

How we got here

Once upon a time, a party's presidential candidate was chosen by professional politicians whose primary motivation in making the choice (beyond any personal agendas) was to win.

Party primaries were "beauty contests," which really meant very little. Occasionally- as in the failure of the "Draft MacArthur" campaign in the Wisconsin Republican primary of 1952- they served as a kind of informal test of a potential candidate's viability. That same year, Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee actually defeated President Harry S Truman in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, and won twelve of the fifteen primaries he entered in the process of going exactly nowhere; primaries had nothing to do with delegate selection, and the Democratic Party turned to Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson instead of Kefauver. In 1960, a victory by Roman Catholic Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts over Congregationalist Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota in the highly Protestant state of West Virginia helped make the case that a Catholic- specifically, Kennedy- could, in fact, be elected President of the United States.

All of that changed in 1968, when Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy of Minnesota, an opponent of the Vietnam War, challenged President Lyndon B. Johnson for the Democratic nomination. McCarthy actually lost the New Hampshire primary to Johnson, but did so unexpectedly well that the President's candidacy for re-election was dealt a serious blow. The subsequent entry of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, the brother of the late president, into the race combined with polls showing McCarthy soundly defeating Johnson in the upcoming Wisconsin Primary to force Johnson to withdraw.

1968 was the year the presidential primary came into its own. McCarthy and Kennedy traveled across the country, doing battle in primary after primary. Kennedy won most, though McCarthy scored a stunning victory in the late Oregon primary that pointed the way toward a showdown on June 5 in California.

Kennedy won a solid victory in California, and seemed to have the Democratic nomination in his grasp. But as he was leaving the ballroom of the Ambassador East Hotel in Los Angeles after delivering his victory statement, he was assassinated, throwing the nomination up for grabs.

As protesters were assaulted by police in the streets surrounding the convention headquarters hotel, Vice-President Humphrey, supported by President Johnson and the party professionals, received the nomination at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago despite having lost the only primary he had entered- that of the state of his birth, South Dakota. Supporters of McCarthy and of Sen. George S. McGovern of South Dakota- a Kennedy supporter who had entered the race in order to pick up the standard of the assassinated front runner- were outraged at the triumph of the very position on the Vietnam War repudiated state after state by the voters in the primaries. As a response to the outcry, the convention voted to establish a commission headed by McGovern and Rep. Donald Fraser of Minnesota to reform and democratize the process of selecting delegates- and we were off to the races.

Although it did not specifically mandate the change, the McGovern-Fraser Commission- later vilified for the "quota system" forcing affirmative action along racial and gender lines for national convention delegates. It essentially forced states to adopt binding primaries as the method by which delegates to the national convention were chosen by requiring an "open" process permitting participation by the party's rank-and-file. Since these changes were often a matter of state law, the Republican process as well as the Democratic process was affected by the change. Where once only a handful of essentially meaningless primaries were held, now binding primaries became the rule rather than the exception- and the current system was born.

The very election cycle the McGovern-Fraser guidelines took effect, in 1972, the state of Iowa began holding its own delegate selection caucuses just before the traditional first presidential primary in New Hampshire. The Iowa Caucuses became significant when, in 1976, obscure Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter came out of nowhere to defeat a group of better known Democratic candidates in Iowa, parlaying the momentum the victory gave him to the 1976 Democratic nomination and election to the White House. Historically, however, the winners of the Iowa Caucuses have failed in their quest for nomination as often as they have succeeded. Winners of the New Hampshire Primary, however, have gone on to win the Republican nomination in twelve of the last sixteen presidential cycles. The Democratic winner in New Hampshire, by contrast, has gone on to be nominated only slightly more than half the time.

How it usually works

Iowa's caucuses take place in January- given the climate, often in the midst of deep snow and brutally cold weather. Unlike a primary, which merely requires voters to step into a polling booth and anonymously record their choice, caucus goers in Iowa are required to devote an entire evening to a process which not only involves recording their presidential preferences and electing precinct party officials and delegates to the county and congressional district party conventions (all usually drafted from among those who happen to show up!), but considering memorials on all manner of local, state, and national issues to the platform committees at the county and congressional district levels. It's quite easy for any truly interested participant to suddenly find himself not only a member of the party's county central committee, but as a delegate to the state convention. I personally have been a delegate to the state conventions of both parties.

As an experience in participatory democracy, the Iowa caucuses are hard to beat. But they have a dark side as well. Only the most dedicated of voters are willing to brave the cold and the snow and devote an entire evening to such a process. As a result, the Iowa caucuses give disproportionate influence to the most highly motivated voters- usually representatives of special interest groups, and the most politically extreme activists on each end of the spectrum. The Iowa caucuses force the presidential candidate selection process to the Left in the case of the Democrats, and to the Right in the case of the Republicans. The more moderate- and often the most thoughtful and electable- candidates in both parties are put at a serious disadvantage.

Moreover, well-heeled special interest groups and well-funded campaigns can easily manipulate the process by transporting large numbers of sympathizers to their respective caucus sites. Participatory democracy actually often takes second place to organization in the Iowa Caucuses, raising the question of just how far they represent an advance over the old system of candidate selection by party professionals in smoke filled rooms- however smokeless, especially among the Democrats, today's caucus sites might be.

There are traditionally three metaphorical "tickets out of Iowa," sometimes referred to as "first class, business, and coach." These go to the top three finishers, presumed to have demonstrated by their showing a serious enough level of support to warrant consideration as serious contenders for their party's nomination. While it's not unheard of for a candidate to finish fourth or worse in Iowa and yet survive as a candidate, fifth or sixth is usually the place where withdrawal statements start getting drafted.

In addition to the specified number of committed delegates, victory in Iowa and/or New Hampshire- both states with curmudgeonly populations which historically delight in crossing up the pollsters and experts- adds momentum, or "Big Mo," to a candidacy. Just how much of an advantage such victories yield depend on a great many variables. A candidate who actually wins a caucus or primary - a good example being President Johnson in New Hampshire in 1968- may be subjectively viewed as having lost if he does less well than expected. Conversely, a candidate who loses but does better than expected is usually seen as having scored a victory (e.g., McCarthy in that same 1968 New Hampshire Democratic primary).

Often, though, it all comes down to a matter of "spin." An example from the present campaign: suppose that Mitt Romney- who spent huge amounts of money building a seemingly insurmountable lead in Iowa during the past year, only to lose that lead to the unknown and underfunded Mike Huckabee- manages to squeeze out a narrow victory over Huckabee in Iowa. Romney's supporters will argue- as Bill Clinton did in 1992- that he's the "Comeback Kid," who fell upon hard times but then rallied and turned likely defeat into victory after all. Huckabee's supporters, on the other hand, will argue that Romney had been working all along for a blowout, and seemed to have it within his grasp only a month or two ago, only to see his margin disappear, leaving him able only to narrowly outpoll an unknown whose strong second place finish is the real victory in Iowa. Winners and losers are a matter of perception, to a point. In the last analysis, momentum is hard to predict from a given result. The real question is the degree to which a given result influences undecided voters in subsequent contests to support a candidate perceived to be in the ascendant.

Eventually, though, it really comes down to delegates. In every case since the Republican convention of 1948, when Thomas Dewey defeated Robert A. Taft, Harold Stassen, Arthur Vandenberg and Earl Warren on the third ballot, some candidate has accumulated enough delegates (and momentum) to be perceived at a certain point prior to the beginning of each nominating convention as having secured sufficient support that his nomination is inevitable. In every subsequent year, the uncommitted have then begun to fall into line, resulting in a first ballot nomination.

It should be emphasized that the process generally takes a couple of months. Iowa generally caucuses late in January, with New Hampshire a week or so later. In recent years, the nomination is usually all but determined at the conclusion of "Super Tuesday-" a conglomeration of primaries all held on a single day, usually some time in March.

During the two or three months between the Iowa caucuses and the moment at which a candidate's nomination begins to be seen as inevitable, candidates have their ups and downs. Places in the pecking order change, and momentum is usually gained and lost to some degree several times over. Sometimes one candidate quickly emerges as a consensus choice; sometimes the field is winnowed down to two or three before a final choice is made. Through the entire process, the voting public gets to know the candidates, their positions, and their personal strengths and weaknesses better. By the time the conventions meet, even hitherto unknown prospective nominees like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have become familiar enough to those participating in the process that a certain degree of comfort is felt with the newly-made choice.

Why 2008 is a special case

States tend to be jealous of the disproportionate influence of Iowa and New Hampshire and other early states on the nominating process. In the last several cycles, there have been moves by a number of states to push their primaries and caucuses to an early enough date to ensure an impact on the process of choosing a nominee, rather than merely confirming a choice already made. The result has been more and more primaries and caucuses crammed into a shorter and shorter time period.

Ever since 1984, one certain Tuesday- generally known as "Super Tuesday"- has decided so many delegate slots as to be the day in which nominations were all but clinched. Whereas in previous cycles the nomination process proceeded at a relatively lazy pace, with states holding their primaries and caucuses either on their own unique day or one shared by at most one or two others, a change took place in 1984, when no fewer than nine states held their primaries on the first "Super Tuesday," March 2.

"Super Tuesday" in 1988 fell on March 8. In 1992, it was March 10. In 1996, it fell on March 13. In 2000, it came on March 14; in 2004, on March 2. The number of primaries held on those dates varied from seven to thirteen; the actual percentage of GOP delegates selected on each of these dates varied widely. But the "tipping point" in the campaign for the nomination- the decisive conglomeration of primaries- usually happened that day in early to mid March, when the most states held their primaries and caucuses on the same day.

This year, so many states wanted to hold early primaries that Iowa and New Hampshire- both of which, by state law, must be respectively the first caucus and the first primary- were pushed back to early January. Both parties enacted punitive measures against states which scheduled primaries and caucuses prior to a designated schedule; at least a few states are defying those rules, despite the risk of either having their delegate representation diminished at the national conventions, or losing their representation altogether (history suggests that both parties will relent at the last minute rather than alienate voters in critical states).

But we won't have a "Super Tuesday" in 2008. Instead, we'll have a "Super Duper Tuesday," better known as "Tsunami Tuesday." This year's "tipping point-" the largest single conglomeration of primaries, with the largest number of delegates being selected- will see no fewer than twenty three primaries, conventions, and caucuses, all taking place on February 5- a mere thirty two days after Iowa! By the time "Tsunami Tuesday" is in the books- scarcely a month after the entire process began- fully forty percent of the delegates to the 2008 Republican National Convention will have been selected!

In 2008, the selection process for presidential nominees- which normally involves somewhere between two and three months between Iowa and "Super Tuesday-" will be telescoped to a single month. The implications are profound. So many primaries and caucuses will be held almost simultaneously that it will be difficult for "momentum," in the conventional sense, to develop for anybody. Early victories- especially where they aren't by decisive margins- will likely have far less impact than usual. So will early defeats. There simply won't be time for the process to sort itself out, and the non-viable candidates to fall by the wayside. And the candidates won't get the thorough vetting they usually do. How can they, when their interaction with the party's voters is cut in half, and they're compelled to be in twice as many places at the same time as ever before?

All of this argues for an election cycle in which no clear favorite emerges by the time the "tipping point" is reached. Granted, there is nothing magical about "Tsunami Tuesday;" after February 5, fully sixty percent of the Republican delegates will remain undecided. Granted, too, that some winnowing will probably take place; one or two of the five major candidates will probably fall to the back of the pack, and perhaps withdraw, either throwing his support to somebody else, or freeing up his backers to support somebody else, thus increasing the likelihood that somebody will manage to arrive at the convention with enough votes to be nominated on the first ballot.

But even the withdrawal of two of the five major candidates between "Tsunami Tuesday" and the convention may not be enough to generate a clear winner. At least at the moment, the candidates seem bunched together closely enough that it's hard to see how the withdrawal of any two would clarify the issue among the three who remain.

Even going in, the dynamics of the 2008 race for the Republican nomination argue for the greatest chance of a brokered convention- one whose outcome is unknown at the time it convenes, and in which the nomination is decided, not by primary and caucus participants, but by the convention delegates themselves- since Gerald Ford's narrow first ballot victory over Ronald Reagan in 1976.

And to make matters worse...

On the cusp of the Iowa Caucuses, the dynamic of the Republican race makes the likelihood of a brokered convention even greater. As of this writing, the polls which yield Real Clear Politics average among Republican voters divides their support among the various candidates this way:


Giuliani 21%
Huckabee 17%
McCain 15.5%
Romney 14.5%
Thompson 11.8%
Paul 4.3%


The leading candidate- Rudy Giuliani- is probably unacceptable to a greater percentage of the Republican electorate than supports him! And to confuse matters still further, the RCP average includes one aberrant poll- the USA TODAY/Gallup poll of December 14 through 16- which gives Giuliani a lead over Huckabee of 11%, skewing the average of a series of polls which show that lead closer to between one and four percent.

If that single poll is thrown out, the picture which emerges is of a virtual tie among Republicans for the national lead between somewhere between three and five candidates (the actual number vary according to the poll). Giuliani, Huckabee, McCain, Romney and perhaps Thompson all come very close to being co-front runners in a race which is already predisposed by the phenomenon of "front loading" (the selection of a disproportionate percentage of delegates early in the process) not to yield a decisive result when the votes are all in on "Tsunami Tuesday," and probably not thereafter.

So what's going to happen?

Some time last year, the Romney campaign- rolling in money contributed by wealthy Mormons and others desirous of electing the first LDS president- hit upon a sound strategy for dealing with this scenario, which even then was beginning to look ominous for the prospect of a decision made by the primary voters rather than the convention delegates. Huge amounts of that money were funneled specifically into Iowa and New Hampshire, whose status as the first two states to make their choices probably garners them at least as much attention as the rest of the primaries and caucuses combined. Huge media buys kept several varied Mitt Romney commercials on the air for almost a year at a time when the other candidates were only thinking about their first real moves toward potential candidacies. Resources were dedicated to Iowa and New Hampshire in such a way as to construct vast and formidable precinct organizations in both.

The objective: "shock and awe-" a double victory at the very beginning of the process so massive and overwhelming that Romney would instantly be seen as the obvious nominee. This would not only suck all the air- and the money- out of the race where the other candidates were concerned, but simultaneously generate further, massive resources with which to conduct what would amount to little more than a mop-up operation in the month that followed Iowa and New Hampshire.

The problem was, in the words of Field Marshall von Moltke, that "no battle plan survives contact with the enemy." The Romney campaign could neither foresee nor prevent the unexpected challenge of underfunded and hitherto unknown Mike Huckabee, whose position in Iowa with less than a week before the caucuses seems strong enough to virtually guarantee that even if Romney wins here, his margin will be so small as to have virtually no impact anywhere else. The real prospect of actual defeat in Iowa looms for Romney, who has been forced to "go negative" against both the former Arkansas governor and Romney's chief nemesis in New Hampshire, John McCain. McCain, too, threatens both to hold any Romney victory in New Hampshire to a magnitude so small as to deprive it of decisive impact, while threatening the possibility- unthinkable not so very long ago- of actual defeat there.

Romney is not only not the most popular of the Republican candidates, but seems currently to rank about fourth. His expectations both in Iowa and in New Hampshire have been so high for so long that even narrow victories in both states might well be perceived as defeats. For Romney to actually lose in either Iowa or in New Hampshire would be an unmitigated disaster; to lose both races would deal his candidacy a blow which it very likely could not survive.

There seems no good outcome likely for Romney. The most he can hope for from the two states which once were the keys in his plan to blow away the opposition at the very beginning of the campaign are narrow, unimpressive victories which establish him, however temporarily, as in effect "first among equals."

I do not envy Romney his position in the national race. With his national popularity at the level it is, it's hard to see him coming out of Iowa and New Hampshire even with narrow victories, and then going on from there to not only arrive at the head of the pack, but to wrap things up by the time the convention begins. And given Romney's difficulty in playing well with others, it's hard to see the supporters of either Huckabee or McCain accepting Romney as a compromise choice.

Mike Huckabee, on the other hand, can credibly portray even a narrow defeat in Iowa as a moral victory. He will have no trouble surviving until South Carolina and the primaries in the South, where he has the potential to do very well indeed. Huckabee seems also to be competitive in non-Southern states like Michigan. His prospects for a break-out seem far better than Romney's, and perhaps the best of all the candidates.

But there's a serious downside to Huckabee's prospects: he's so disliked by the party's economic conservatives that to be nominated he, too, would have to achieve a majority or near majority of the convention delegates before the convention actually met. Similarly John McCain- perhaps the strongest of potential Republican nominees, who seems to be making a comeback in the polls- is unpopular enough with doctrinaire conservatives who resent his support for campaign finance reform, his position on immigration- and his embarrassing foresight in supporting the "Gang of Fourteen" compromise which guaranteed the confirmation of Justices Roberts and Alito while preserving the filibuster for what is now a Senate Republican minority that it's hard to see the Hard Right easily accepting him as the nominee, much less willingly accepting him as a compromise candidate.

Rudy Giuliani, the darling of the MSM, is an out-and-out social liberal probably seen as utterly unacceptable by more Republicans than support him. That pretty much leaves Fred Thompson, who nobody really dislikes and who, if he can remain viable, probably would have the best chance of emerging as the compromise choice.

But I expect Thompson, frankly, to be one of the first to be knocked out of the race. He doesn't seem to be strong enough anywhere to carve out a niche for himself. Still, with a race this fluid, anything can happen.

Perhaps the Republican party will have its first brokered convention in sixty years, and somebody not currently in the race- somebody like Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, for example, or Gov. Mark Sanford of North Carolina, or even Newt Gingrich might emerge as a compromise candidate. It's only a fantasy, but in a way it's kind of fun imaging Hillary Clinton, in all her feminist glory, having the wind taken out of her sails by finding herself opposed in November by- Liddy Dole! Wouldn't J.C. Watts be an interesting opponent for Barak Obama? I wonder what effect the nomination of Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla) might have on Republican prospects among Hispanic Americans, especially given the fact that even the Democrats seem to be adopting a relatively hard line on immigration?

What I suspect will happen, though, is that sometime between "Tsunami Tuesday" and the convention, the surviving candidates will begin to wheel and deal. If three candidates remain in the race, and none of them are significantly ahead of the others, they all might start talking about making a deal to make the one survivor most acceptable to the other two the nominee. Or if one candidate has a clear and decisive lead- not nearly a majority, but significant enough to make him a clear front-runner- the other two might simply bow out on the eve of the convention, and make Minneapolis-St. Paul a coronation after all, rather than and old fashioned political brawl like conventions of days gone by.

I do not see anyone emerging from the primaries with enough delegates to be nominated on the first ballot without some kind of deal among the top three contenders.

I do not see a compromise naming Romney, Giuliani or Huckabee as the nominee- and I have serious doubts about that happening to John McCain, though he might command enough grudging personal respect from those who oppose him to surprise me.

Huckabee might win the nomination, but he would have to win it outright, gaining something awfully close to a majority in the primaries- and the odds are against him.

Thompson would be a natural compromise candidate- but only if he can break through somewhere in the process and become one of the last three standing.

On the other hand, maybe the nominee will be somebody who isn't even a candidate at this point. By the convention next September, it will have been sixty-seven years since the Republican party nominated Wendell Wilke. I think we can assume that the 2008 Republican nominee will be better known at the time of his nomination than Wilkie was in 1940. But it's going to be fascinating to see who it turns out to be- and the path he (or she) takes to get there.

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