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In Praise of Brokering
CNN's account of the West Virginia convention praises the triumph of raw politics
Romney's campaign was furious over the "Washington backroom deal."
"Unfortunately, this is what Sen. McCain's inside Washington ways look like: He cut a backroom deal with the tax-and-spend candidate he thought could best stop Gov. Romney's campaign of conservative change," read a statement from Romney campaign manager Beth Myers.
Front-runners McCain and Romney have engaged in bitter exchanges over their conservative records in recent weeks.
"This is raw politics as it's really practiced," CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider said. "The McCain supporters who were third in the first round decided to throw their weight behind Mike Huckabee in order to stop Mitt Romney from winning this convention. And look at that -- they did."
Schneider gives too little credit to the Armies of Ron Paul, as the combined McCain-Huck vote was only 49 percent: Paul supporters sealed the deal. But the whole experience reveals how much more fair these second-choice contests are then the primaries most Republicans and Democrats will be voting in today. If you're a Ron Paul backer in Connecticut, and your absolute last choice for the nom is John McCain, tough luck: McCain will win every delegate even if he gets less than 50 percent of the vote. If you're a McCain hater in Missouri and you can't decide between Huck or Mitt, you're helping McCain secure a plurality win in a take-all contest. We'd have a far fairer, better sense of what voters wanted if everyone piled into caucuses/conventions... or, better, if they could mark the ballots with their 1st and 2nd choices. (That would clean up a lot of the wasted Fred/Edwards/Rudy absentee votes we'll see today.)
Disgruntled Paul Supporter|2.5.08 @ 4:41PM|#
WTF, Paul supporters handed McCain a primary!? That's it, I'm never, ever, EVER, going to waste my time voting again. I f**king hate elections, dammit. While I'm at it, I'm going to roll off all the curse words I know: dammit, piss, shit, titties, fuck, ass(hole), bitch, twat, faggot.
Fluffy|2.5.08 @ 4:45PM|#
No, they handed Huckabee a convention.
More good news out of WV - apparently there was practically a
fistfight between Romney supporters and McCain's state chairman
[Abernathy?] after the conclusion of the voting.
CRIPPLE FIGHT
|2.5.08 @ 4:46PM|#
Romney is the biggest loser candidate I've ever seen. He gets clobbered in every contest he hopes to win unless he has personal connections in said state (Michigan) or its a state where nobody else seriously contends (Wyoming, Nevada).
|2.5.08 @ 4:47PM|#
According to LRC, the payoff for Paul's support was 3 delegates. With only 10% of the voters, I'd say they cut a pretty good deal.
|2.5.08 @ 4:49PM|#
I was initially appalled that only about 1100 people showed up
to the caucus before I figured out it was a convention-type
deal.
One thing I can't figure out is whether this is all of the WV
Republican delegates or is there a later primary or caucus to
select the rest.
If it's just a convention that semms a little undemocratic.
Disgruntled Paul Supporter|2.5.08 @ 4:52PM|#
Sorry, meant Huckabee. I honestly don't see the difference between him and McCain.
|2.5.08 @ 4:52PM|#
"Uh... They handed it to Huckabee."
But in doing so, aren't they handing McCain the nomination? If
Huckabe quit and it were a two way race between McCain and Romney,
Romney has a chance. But as long as Huckabe is hanging in their
Romney is screwed. That at least is what the Romney supporters are
saying. National Review, who are all Romney shills, are accusing
McCain of promising Huckabee the VP slot for staying in the race.
It seems to me if you hate McCain, the last thing you would do is
vote for Huckabe. I really don't get it.
|2.5.08 @ 4:54PM|#
This is the only place I've heard Paul winning any delegates. EVERY other story says Sucklebee scored them all. What gives?
robc|2.5.08 @ 4:54PM|#
de stijl,
18 selected today. 9 at later primary. 3 unattached superdelegates,
althouth the GOP calls them something else.
|2.5.08 @ 4:54PM|#
My son attends UC Berkeley and lives at one of the student co-op
houses near campus. This past weekend, they held elections for
house manager -- online. The ballot was ranked-choice (although
there were only two candidates), the voting process was easy, and
confidentiality was built into the system -- along with
accountability. All voters were each given unique encoded ID keys,
which nobody could trace back to any individual, but which the
voters could use to verify that their votes had been collected and
counted correctly, once the anonymized results -- every vote --
were posted for public scrutiny.
It seems to me as if a system that were only a little more
sophisticated than this could be used in elections such as we are
participating in today, and would offer at least as much
confidentiality, accuracy, speed in tabulation, and protection
against tampering, as the systems we use today, especially if the
source code for key software were available for inspection under
open-source arrangements.
I said this back in 2000, before HAVA and before I had ever seen a
real system such as the one my son used this past weekend. We know
what we want and need. We know that systems fitting the bill (or
almost so, with only a little improvement necessary) are available
and currently in use -- so definitely within the capability of
"professionals" in industry or government to produce. SO WHERE ARE
THEY?
The fact that my son can use ranked-choice voting in a sufficiently
secure and accurate online voting procedure for co-op house manager
today and yet we don't have such a thing for our official elections
after eight years of sturm-und-drang over -- and millions of
dollars thrown at -- our supposed electoral system "crisis," seems
to indicate that people really aren't serious about elections
here.
let's fire the bozos and get people who are truly committed to
making sure that everyone's vote is securely, confidentially,
accurately collected and counted. And if the bozos complain about
being discharged, let's remind them that, in previous eras, the
alternative punishments included jail time or even tarring and
feathering. I'm tired of the scams. Aren't you?
|2.5.08 @ 4:57PM|#
Cesar,
You leave the Republican version of John Kerry alone. He is level
headed and has the experience to manage this economy.
|2.5.08 @ 4:59PM|#
Disgruntled Paul Supporter wrote, "While I'm at it, I'm going to
roll off all the curse words I know ..."
That is such a small list. I was going to make a joke about your
ignorance showing that you attended public school, but I realized
that anyone who really did attend public school would certainly
have a much larger swearing vocabulary. This is one area in which
the public sector excels.
economist|2.5.08 @ 5:00PM|#
Well, this is a fine how-do-you-do. What was the point in the Paul delegates giving Huckabee the contest? Since Romney seems to be the least offensive candidate (from a libertarian standpoint), I would say that the Paul delegates should have gone to Romney. Now I'm even more pissed off than I was before. Maybe I shouldn't have bothered voting today. I voted for Paul, since I detest all the other candidates.
|2.5.08 @ 5:04PM|#
Economist,
It sure seems to me that the Paulites are really voting for McCain.
Huckabe can't win. The only alternative to McCain is Romney. Every
day Huckabe stays in the election, the more chance their is that
McCain wins. I really don't see the logic of supporting your worse
enemy (Huckabe) to enable your second worst enemy (McCain) to
win.
robc|2.5.08 @ 5:05PM|#
economist,
Huck offered 3 delegates. Im guessing Mitt offered a giant glass of
get the fuck out of here. Although Im sure he said it nicer.
|2.5.08 @ 5:06PM|#
Im guessing Mitt offered a giant glass of get the fuck out
of here.
Caffeine-free get the fuck out of here - he is a Mormon after
all.
|2.5.08 @ 5:07PM|#
I still don't get the conservative disdain for McCain
So he supported an immigration bill you didn't like. Well, guess
what? Because of that he'll probably stop the Dems from sweeping
the southwest. Hes gung-ho pro forever war, hes pro-life, he takes
a hardline on spending. I just don't get it.
|2.5.08 @ 5:08PM|#
"economist,
Huck offered 3 delegates. Im guessing Mitt offered a giant glass of
get the fuck out of here. Although Im sure he said it nicer."
If that is true, he is a moron. He should have offered them some
delegates and won the state. He needs everything he can get right
now. A Huckabe win is really a McCain win.
|2.5.08 @ 5:10PM|#
But the whole experience reveals how much more fair these
second-choice contests are then the primaries most Republicans and
Democrats will be voting in today.
There are no winner-take-all Democratic primaries today.
I don't think there are any winner-take-all Democratic contests,
period.
|2.5.08 @ 5:11PM|#
"I still don't get the conservative disdain for McCain
So he supported an immigration bill you didn't like. Well, guess
what? Because of that he'll probably stop the Dems from sweeping
the southwest. Hes gung-ho pro forever war, hes pro-life, he takes
a hardline on spending. I just don't get it."
Neither do I. I understand why the Reasonites don't like him. He is
pro war and he apparently killed Matt Welch's puppy when Welch was
a child. But he is also reliably anti-torture, something that gets
him no love from Reason even though it ought to. But the NRO Weekly
Standard types hate of him really puzzles me. I think it comes down
to the fact that McCain doesn't kiss their ass like they want him
to. He has a temper and has been mean to them and they don't like
him. WAAAA.
|2.5.08 @ 5:12PM|#
You leave the Republican version of John Kerry alone. He is level headed and has the experience to manage this economy.
So you're telling me he should be Secretary of the Treasury or
Chairman of the Federal Reserve? Somehow that would make more sense
than he being President.
Fluffy|2.5.08 @ 5:16PM|#
But he is also reliably anti-torture
Must...control...fists...of...death....
|2.5.08 @ 5:19PM|#
Yeah Fluffy, apparently McCain killed your puppy to. It is funny. You read the Romney shills on NRO and you would think that McCain is a paid Al Quada agent who wants to make sure that every terrorist in the world gets a free trial at The Hague before being punished for anything. You read Hit and Run and you would think that he was for randomly cutting people's balls off to make sure they don't think about being a terrorist. It kind of makes me think that at least with regard to torture, McCain might have the right view.
|2.5.08 @ 5:20PM|#
Disgruntled Paul Supporter,
faggot is not a curse word, (unless you're the huckster,) it is a
god given sexual orientation.
Fluffy|2.5.08 @ 5:21PM|#
John -
That's only if torture's one of those things that can be usefully
analyzed using the doctrine of the mean.
Silly me, I don't think it can be.
The right place to be is not "between the extremes" when the two
extremes are "torture at will" and "don't torture anyone".
|2.5.08 @ 5:22PM|#
Democrats outlawed winner-take-all primaries as part of those great McGovern reforms which made the party so strong from 1972 through 2006 :-)
|2.5.08 @ 5:23PM|#
"The right place to be is not "between the extremes" when the
two extremes are "torture at will" and "don't torture
anyone"."
It is my understanding that is McCain's position. He has always
been against torture.
|2.5.08 @ 5:24PM|#
When drawing up a list of things that screwed the Democrats between 1972 and 2006, I'd probably put "lack of winner-take-all primaries" somewhere on Page 3.
|2.5.08 @ 5:25PM|#
James Anderson Merritt,
I've wondered if other people had thought of a system like this. It
seemed like such an obvious idea that I assumed they had, but I'd
never heard of it in practice before.
It does make me wonder why we don't have something better. When you
have the ability for every individual to confirm his vote using his
ID after the fact while preserving anonymity, it seems like a win
for the individual voter. If the voter attendance lists were
computerized as well, it would reduce fraud and prevent
over-voting. Recounts would be nonexistent. And if the data were
made public, anyone with a PC could verify that the individual
votes match totals for precincts, counties, states, etc.
I don't know whether to chalk up the non-existence of this system
to incompetence or willful resistance to something that will reduce
cheating. As more people like your son use or hear about these
systems, it's going to be harder for politicians to avoid with a
straight face, though.
Someone Who Doesn\'t Want to L|2.5.08 @ 5:26PM|#
John,
On McCain, the question implied by your sentence:
But the NRO Weekly Standard types hate of him really puzzles me.
Can be answered by the first clause in your previous
sentence:
But he is also reliably anti-torture,
Fluffy|2.5.08 @ 5:29PM|#
It is my understanding that is McCain's position.
Many people think that about McCain. I don't think the final
version of the Military Commissions Act, as amended by Senator
McCain, supports that conclusion.
I didn't like McCain before that, but that really sealed it for me.
I considered his actions during the passage of that bill to be a
supreme betrayal, precisely because he's the last man in the Senate
I would expect to hand the executive branch immunity on past
torture and wiggle room on future torture.
|2.5.08 @ 5:29PM|#
But the NRO Weekly Standard types hate of him really puzzles
me.
Maybe that's because Kristol endorsed him in 2000 and is shilling
for him now. Confusing, I know.
THarms|2.5.08 @ 5:31PM|#
Quote: "I really don't see the logic of supporting your worse
enemy (Huckabe) to enable your second worst enemy (McCain) to
win."
Au contraire. This was a brilliant move; a demonstration of a raw
power from libertarians who have been in exile from the GOP for 35
years. It asserts in a loud, unequivocal voice, "We are back, and
despite our small numbers, we will not be trifled with." There are
some very concerned people in Washington tonight. Quite good.
Brokered convention, here we come.
|2.5.08 @ 5:34PM|#
But...but...but...with McCain holding such a strong national lead, wouldn't denying states to Romney make a brokered convention LESS likely?
Someone Who Doesn\'t Want to L|2.5.08 @ 5:41PM|#
John:
But in doing so, aren't they handing McCain the nomination? If Huckabe quit and it were a two way race between McCain and Romney, Romney has a chance. But as long as Huckabe is hanging in their Romney is screwed. That at least is what the Romney supporters are saying.
Whether Huckabee remaining in the race damages Romney or not is
pretty questionable. This is especially as some polls have seemed
to indicate that most Huckabee voters tend to pick McCain as their
second choice (no citation, but I've read it several places,
particularly in Florida - someone less lazy than me can find it if
need be). I think a pretty decent case might be made that Huckabee
staying in the race damages McCain more than Romney. Of course it
doesn't damage McCain much, since Romney is pretty weak all
around.
As far as Paul supporters go, I don't know. There might be
some that would say that Romney is the least objectionable
other candidate, but I don't think Paul's support is all
Libertarian (and maybe not even primarily so). In fact, I think
Paul might have significant support among social conservatives
because of some of the views he holds that a significant number of
libertarians disagree with him on. (Some of these are his
anti-globalization free trade ambivalence, his anti-immigration
views, and his pro-life positions.) Possibly this is a reason a lot
of his voters would definitely prefer Huckabee over McCain or
especially Romney.
|2.5.08 @ 5:42PM|#
Why do Reason & NRO types hate on McCain? Let's see...
McCain was the only Republican member of the infamous Keating
Five.
McCain/Feingold was an appalling attempt to protect incumbents at
the expense of the 1st Amendment.
McCain opposed the Bush tax cuts, opposed cutting the "death tax",
and has rarely shown any interest whatsoever in reigning in
spending, regardless of what he's saying on the campaign trail
now.
Tack on to that the fact that he's a bit of a warmonger.
He hasn't killed my dog (yet), but I have no intention of voting
for him, even if he does become the GOP candidate.
|2.5.08 @ 5:44PM|#
Since when did NRO types dislike corrupt Republicans?
Aren't they running a jihad against the prosecutor who nailed Tom
Delay?
|2.5.08 @ 5:46PM|#
...but I realized that anyone who really did attend public
school would certainly have a much larger swearing vocabulary. This
is one area in which the public sector excels.
OTOH, when I attended public high school the girls who had attended
elementary and middle school in the Catholic system knew a lot more
dirty jokes.
Honest.
n0rd1x|2.5.08 @ 5:55PM|#
So it was the Ron Paul people who pushed Huckabee over the top? It would have been great if the Paul people would have split between Romney and Huckabee so that it was a tie, forcing a loop of revoting over and over and over ..... just to show how screwed up all this primary and caucus crap is.
Vent|2.5.08 @ 5:58PM|#
when I attended public high school the girls who had attended elementary and middle school in the Catholic system knew a lot more dirty jokes.
Honest.
J sub -- I believe you. Repression has that effect. Kids don't care
much about sexual humor unless you give it meaning by forbidding
the whole subject.
|2.5.08 @ 6:01PM|#
But...but...but...with McCain holding such a strong national
lead, wouldn't denying states to Romney make a brokered convention
LESS likely?
Yeah, I was thinking that earlier, but I think it's irrelevant.
McCain wasn't going to win WV anyway, so moving a few delegates
between the 2nd and 3rd place guy doesn't change McCain's chances
of getting over 50% of the delegates.
And, those chances are extremely high so there is almost no chance
at a brokered convention in the first place. Even if it
did make it less likely, a little less than almost zero is
still almost zero.
|2.5.08 @ 6:02PM|#
joe,
Sorry to interrupt your smugness trip, but the Dems' superdelegate
system, which blatantly favors party establishment figures, is just
as un-"democratic" as the Repubs' winner-take-all primaries. Look
at Hillary's slim lead over Obama in district-allocated delegates
versus her giant lead among the supers.
Kolohe|2.5.08 @ 6:06PM|#
And to clarify something above:
Weekly Standard loves McCain (so much that Bill Kristol would
personally volunteer to have his half black baby) McCain traces the
main faultline in the pschism between Weekly Standard and National
Review.
|2.5.08 @ 6:10PM|#
Note, though, that only a little over three hundred
superdelegates out of 796 have declared for Hillary* or Obama so
Obama has a good chance to catch up.
*I wonder. Is Hillary going to be the first president who will be
generally referred to by first name?
Someone Who Doesn\'t Want to L|2.5.08 @ 6:14PM|#
Tara,
Reason types and NRO types might both hate on McCain, but I doubt
very much it's for the same reasons. NRO and Reason's view-overlap
is not really that big. In the case of McCain, NRO's biggest
complaints are (in my opinion) his not-anti-immigration enough
positions, his lack of sufficient support for torture. As you can
see from Fluffy's comments, if Reason types are opposed to McCain
on torture, it is that he isn't opposed enough to it. Also, most
Reasonites (sorry, LoneWacko) view his old immigration stand as
more reasonable than the new version.
The NRO people tend to be very into War-on-Terror, national
security, border fences, anti-immigration, law and order, and other
such "National Greatness" right-wing Nationalism ideas. A common
topic on NRO is the "National Question" which covers a lot of this.
Reason-types tend to hold the opposite views on most of these
issues, as the NRO view is generally one in favor of expansive
government power. Also, NRO tends to be more socially conservative
than does Reason, which again, tends to hold the opposite view on
most or all issues important to social conservatives. The only
overlap I've seen between the two markets in large part is on
economics, which, though both populations tend to mostly agree on
direction, shows a marked difference in the importance placed on
these issues. NRO and Reason may agree on which direction the
economy should go, but agree in neither how far it should go, nor
how important the economy is.
This is one of the reasons I tend to get confused when people view
libertarians as essentially conservative. If you look at things in
terms of the mythical three-legged "Reagan stool" of yore,
libertarians usually only agree with conservatives on one
of the three legs of the stool (the economic one). Further on the
other two legs (the social behavior one and the national
security-greatness one), the source of the friction isn't that
libertarians view the legs as unimportant, but that libertarians
actually hold the opposite view from the standard
conservative one. This doesn't make a very good alliance in my
opinion, and it doesn't make a very good case that libertarians are
just Republicans who don't want to be called Republicans,
either.
Jon|2.5.08 @ 6:31PM|#
"*I wonder. Is Hillary going to be the first president who will
be generally referred to by first name?"
Following in the tradition of Saddam Hussein. It always puzzled me
that people referred to him by his first name, even when they were
trying to portray him as The Great Evil.
It seemed so incongruous to call him just "Saddam".
|2.5.08 @ 6:31PM|#
Is Hillary going to be the first president who will be
generally referred to by first name?
Possibly, but not HER first name -- I think most of us would, once
she starts rolling out her statist agenda, start referring to her
using the first name of my old school chum "Fucking A!".
THarms|2.5.08 @ 7:29PM|#
It gets better, by swinging the election to an also-ran in the first Super Tuesday state to close and announce results, they have possibly influenced voting throughout the rest of the country -- where voting will continue for many hours. Voters in those states are now more likely to believe that a vote for Huckabee (or Paul) is not a wasted vote. Expect both Romney and McCains' vote totals to decline as a result.
|2.5.08 @ 8:05PM|#
I really really don't get why some people here think Romney is the better "libetarian" choice over McCain?
|2.5.08 @ 8:11PM|#
Further on the other two legs (the social behavior one and
the national security-greatness one), the source of the friction
isn't that libertarians view the legs as unimportant, but that
libertarians actually hold the opposite view from the standard
conservative one.
I think it is in general a mistake to characterize all libertarians
that way on foreign policy, or else you're kicking out a lot of
libertarian-leaning voters. War is pretty unlibertarian at a basic
level-- but so is unquestioned support for the concept of national
sovereignty, honestly. There is something fundamentally
unlibertarian in the idea that it's okay if people at being
oppressed simply because they're in or were born in another
country. It is not necessarily unlibertarian to occasionally view
defense spending, national security, intervention, or even war as a
lesser evil in some cases. Particularly if one feels that the
country was attacked first.
Sure, you can have a nationalistic libertarianism that believes in
"Libertarianism in One Country," and is more unconcerned with
outsiders (and thus, e.g., oppose immigration strenuously as well)
but it doesn't seem to me that such a policy is necessarily antiwar
or isolationist either.
Of course, libertarians were considerably more at home with that
particular "leg" of the stool when it meant opposing communism in
the Cold War. The end of the Cold War, more than anything, weakened
fusionism and the stool.
|2.5.08 @ 8:27PM|#
I wonder. Is Hillary going to be the first president who
will be generally referred to by first name?
Well, I wouldn't call her "President Hillary", but she definitely
wouldn't be the first president to be commonly referred to by
something other than her last name. Remember Dubya, Ike, and
Teddy?
Someone Who Doesn\'t Want to L|2.5.08 @ 8:43PM|#
John Thacker,
I think it is in general a mistake to characterize all libertarians that way on foreign policy, or else you're kicking out a lot of libertarian-leaning voters. War is pretty unlibertarian at a basic level-- but so is unquestioned support for the concept of national sovereignty, honestly.
Fair enough, I suppose. However, my suspicion is still that more
libertarians lean toward weakening government (war-making) power
even in this case. (Or they at least lean toward weakening
government power in the one nation where they have some impact.)
Certainly in the other parts of that leg of these stool (law and
order police power questions and immigration) more libertarians
tend to oppose the power of the government and nationalistic views
in general. You will certainly see some who call themselves
libertarians ("Mainstream Libertarians!" - a joke for the regulars)
who claim that the only important thing for libertarians in life or
politics is the support of the US during wartime and the necessary
associated expansion of government military and police powers. I
doubt, however, that they are a very large faction in the total
group of self-described libertarians.
I'm not sure that the libertarian leaning voters we'd be talking
about aren't conservatives who just feel the economic leg is
more important than the other two. There are plenty of
these somewhat "libertarian-leaning" voters in the Republican
party. They'd tend to agree with other conservative Republicans on
almost every issue in that "stool", but could find more common
ground with libertarians than could some due to the fact that they
place relatively little import or emphasis on the issues on which
libertarians disagree with conservatives. These "business-oriented"
conservatives are probably a large chunk of what people view as the
cosmo-tarian wing of the libertarians, an irony since some of them
might be better described as conservative than libertarian.
I guess in the end, the question is: Does one need to merely have
weak opposition to libertarians on most issues to be considered
libertarian leaning, or should at least weak support be
necessary?
Of course, libertarians were considerably more at home with that particular "leg" of the stool when it meant opposing communism in the Cold War. The end of the Cold War, more than anything, weakened fusionism and the stool.
True. Probably unnecessarily so, though, given the vast
overestimation by our intelligence agencies of the power and threat
of the Soviet Union.
|2.6.08 @ 10:08AM|#
Well, I wouldn't call her "President Hillary",
It'll be too confusing to call her President Clinton, since we
still call her husband President under our odious tradition in this
country of continuing to call people by their titles even when they
no longer hold the office.
It's too clunky to call her President Hillary Clinton.
Prez Hill it is!
Tsu Dho Nihm|2.6.08 @ 10:56AM|#
I've always preferred a Heisman-style vote system with 3 points
awarded for a 1st place vote, 2 for second, and 1 for third.
Whoever gets the most points wins.
For the Heisman trophy the winner isusually the guy with the most
first-place votes. But in closely contested elections, with the
'anyone but that jackass' mentality so prevalent, it could
make things quite interesting.
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