(Chuck Muth) – The fallout from the Nevada Republican Party’s brain-dead decision to hold a competing presidential “caucus” two days after the official state-run presidential primary in February continues to spread.
Reporter S.V. Date of HuffPost notes that the Nevada GOP banned any candidate who filed to run in the primary on February 6 from appearing on the ballot for the February 8 caucus.
Nikki Haley and Tim Scott – who Nevada GOP Chairman Michael McDonald referred to as “not serious candidates” – will be on the primary ballot that every Republican voter will receive in the mail next January.
Haley is a former governor and U.N. ambassador, and Scott is a sitting U.S. senator. Sounds pretty serious to me even if they’re not leading in the polls.
Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and others who succumbed to the Republican Party’s extortion plot (it costs $55,000 to get your name on the caucus ballot) will not appear on the primary ballot (free).
Now here’s the thing…
Candidates can only win delegates to the Republican National Convention next summer if they participate in the caucus. So it’s quite possible that the winner of the primary will get more votes than the winner of the caucus despite getting no convention delegates.
And that’s going to confuse and anger Republican voters who aren’t following politics on a day-to-day basis. Heck, it’s confusing enough for people who ARE actively involved in politics.
“It’s a complicated thing,” Roberto Rivera told Date while waiting in line to attend a Trump rally in Las Vegas last week. “You’ve got to get online and find out where to go. They’re not making it easy.”
Renee Bardot, also in line to attend the Trump rally, said “she didn’t know about the two different days and primary versus caucus. She was enraged when she learned that the state-run primary would not have Trump’s name on it.”
“If Trump isn’t on the ballot, I’m never going to vote again,” she told Date. “I have land in Utah. I’ll go live there and raise sheep.”
Ugh.
Everyone knows, though party leaders continue to deny, that this discombobulated system was set up to “rig” the presidential selection process in Nevada for Trump.
If there were any doubts, Chairman McDonald laid them to rest at last week’s Trump rally where he openly and publicly declared: “You give us a fair election, I’ll give you the next president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.”
Perhaps the dumbest excuse party leaders are giving for this fuster-cluck is that the results of the caucus will be known the night of the caucus – *if* everything goes as planned, which is NOT a given.
“You go to bed, your man or woman is winning, you wake up the next day, and they’re behind by 3,000 votes,” McDonald said at the rally. “You don’t think they’re trying to rig this?”
Um, no.
The reason some GOP candidates hold a lead that eventually evaporates is that Democrats are MUCH better at getting their voters to vote by mail and voters have until midnight on Election Day to get their ballots to the U.S. post office.
That means those Democrat ballots simply came in later, not that they’re fraudulent.
I don’t like universal mail-in balloting, but those are the rules of the game. Republicans just play the game under these new rules badly.
And they’re going to continue to play the get-out-the-vote (GOTV) game badly by opting for their presidential caucus rather than putting new procedures and processes in place for the presidential primary that will encourage Republicans to vote early and/or vote by mail.
Indeed, if they party was smart (stop laughing!), it would at least encourage Republican voters to participate in BOTH elections so it can get some practice with their new “Bank Your Vote” program, right?
But this is the NEVADA Republican Party we’re talking about. So instead, they are DISCOURAGING Republicans from participating in the state-run primary.
McDonald told folks at the Trump rally that the Republican candidates who opted to file for primary election were “competing for a plastic tiara, and we’re going to give you a participation trophy.”
Lovely.
And Carson City Republican Party Chairwoman Susan Ruch wrote in her newsletter a couple weeks ago: “Don’t waste your time participating in the PPP (presidential preference primary) on February 6. We ask that you only participate in the Nevada Caucus.”
Telling voters not to vote because their vote doesn’t matter seems an odd way of encouraging voters to vote, don’t you think?
Ladies and gentlemen, YOUR Nevada Republican Party.
Funny side note…
Earlier this week, Gov. Lombardo blasted the “incredible confusion” the Nevada GOP’s presidential caucus was already causing in the state. He noted that it will “disenfranchise a number of voters” and is “unacceptable.”
The governor went on to note he’s had “numerous conversations” with Nevada GOP leaders and others involved in the caucus decision, but said his concerns were “falling on deaf ears.”
To which Republican National Committeewoman Sigal Chattah (cue laugh track) responded in a Nevada Globe article by essentially calling the state’s #1 elected Republican – who she hates with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns – a liar…
“I privately met with the governor on October 7 and discussed a myriad of issues, including his neutral stance on the caucus. Never once did he indicate any concern of disenfranchisement of Republican voters, nor did he indicate any dissent or adverse sentiments about the process.”
Anyone who believes Chattah’s version of any such discussion, if it even took place, probably also believes Hunter Biden is a model citizen and a good family man.
Chattah is not a serious party leader. She’s a joke. A carnival side show. The notion that any serious GOP political player would waste their time talking serious issues with this embarrassment is laughable.
Come on. Even if you’re a Trump supporter, you gotta admit this is stupidity stuck on steroids. If Trump’s as far ahead in the polls as his campaign keeps telling us, he’d win the primary OR the caucus. So why throw this absurd monkey wrench into the process?
And I guarantee there’s more dumb to come.
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
“Governor Lombardo has consistently stated that he would like to see all candidates engage with all Republican voters. The (caucus vs. primary) process that has been put in place makes that impossible.” – Elizabeth Ray, spokesperson for Gov. Lombardo, in a statement to the Nevada Globe
Mr. Muth is president of Citizen Outreach, publisher of Nevada News & Views, and founder of CampaignDoctor.com. You can sign up for his conservative, Nevada-focused e-newsletter at MuthsTruths.com. His views are his own.