Enter
ry calendar scofflaw Florida.)
Also, to lessen the influence
of early primaries, any state that
stages its nominating contest before the second week of March
must award its delegates proportionally. (After that date, states
are allowed to be all #YOLO about
how they award delegates.)
EARLY CONVENTIONS:
“The Republican National Convention will be held either in late
June or early July, though ideally on a date before the July 4
holiday.” Yes. Let’s do this. Why
did anyone have to stomp around
Tampa, Fla., in the hottest and
swampiest days of August?
The perceived advantage here
is that a candidate can only spend
funds raised for the general election after he or she is officially
nominated, so the sooner that
gets settled, the better. Romney
was widely perceived to have been
hamstrung by this rule in 2012.
LIMITING THE NUMBER OF DEBATES:
Oh, sweet, sassy molassey, let it
be true! As Hamby notes, “the
2012 campaign saw an eye-popping 20 Republican debates,” each
more jaw-droppingly worthless
than the one before it. If there’s
LOOKING FORWARD
IN ANGST
one way the primary process has
threatened to destroy America,
it’s when two parties with open
primaries combine for 40 debates
and pulverize everyone’s will to go
on living.
These RNC reformers note the
weird way in which the 2012
debate season played out allowed obvious losers like Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann
the chance to be the perceived
frontrunner, drawing time and
attention away from more viable
candidates. (One exception: Rick
Santorum definitely used shrewd
debating skills to demonstrate
his viability. He wasn’t one of the
flash-in-the-pan candidates, he
was a pugilist who blazed a survivor’s path from single digits to
second place.)
Of course, your next step in
divining the ins and outs of these
changes is to pop on over to
Frontloading HQ, where procedural sherpa Josh Putnam offers his
typical super-detailed take on the
finer points of these proposals.
His bottom line? “Will it work?
Time will tell.”
Let’s hope it does, because no
one wants to see 40 debates in
2016, except possibly Satan himself.
HUFFINGTON
12.22.13