"Voterless" elections

art credit: plymouthministorage.com

Okay, Ann Coulter is a bomb-thrower, but she also can hit the nail squarely on the head. Her column the other day was about the “voterless” primary elections, in which GOPe “leaders” are giving delegates to candidates whether the electorate likes it or not. Wisconsin. Colorado. Wyoming. Is West Virginia next? Here are extracts from her column

Another misconception sweeping the nation is that when state Republican parties disregard the voters and give all their delegates to Cruz, they are merely following THE RULES, and Trump is an idiot for not knowing THE RULES. 

That's what the Colorado GOP did, what the Tennessee and Louisiana parties are trying to do -- and what many other states may do, all under the careful tutelage of Tracy Flick Cruz.

I keep asking someone to send me a copy of THE RULES that direct state parties to ignore the voters and pick their own slate of delegates, but no one can cite such a rule. So I read through "The Rules of the Republican Party" myself -- and guess what? There's no rule instructing state parties to ignore the voters! 

To the contrary, the rules were recently rewritten so that delegate selection would "reflect the results of statewide presidential preference elections," according to a statement by Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus. (The nerds will tell us, that's "legislative history," not THE RULES.) 

Apparently, what people mean by THE RULES is that there is no RNC rule specifically prohibiting a state party from giving all the delegates to a single nominee, even if that is demonstrably at odds with the will of the voters. 

The state parties are given a lot of discretion, so Cruz harasses and cajoles the local party until it awards all the state's delegates to him. Trump keeps winning elections, and Cruz keeps winning sneaky procedural victories. 

Until Cruz won a primary in mean-as-a-snake Wisconsin, he hadn't won a single primary -- i.e., an "election" -- outside of his home state, a sister state and a state where Trump didn't campaign. In fact, until cantankerous Wisconsin, the only primary where Cruz managed to surpass 34 percent of the vote was his home state of Texas -- where he got 43.8 percent. 

(Contrary to lies you read in The New York Times, Trump has not complained about any of those races. And you know why? Because they were elections, not corrupt backroom maneuvering. Hey - does anyone know if the general election is won by influence-peddling with tiny groups of insiders or is it by winning elections?) 

It's as if Cruz and Trump are playing different sports: Trump keeps belting home runs, while Cruz is berating the umpire until he calls a balk, then prances to home base, telling everyone he hit a grand slam. 

True, there's no rule explicitly disallowing a state party from rigging the delegate selection. There's also no rule explicitly disallowing a state party from giving all its delegates to Kim Kardashian. 

Cruz is bragging about winning delegates in “voterless” elections, as the Drudge Report and other media dub them. Trump's “campaign strategy is to win with the voters. Ted Cruz’s campaign strategy is to win despite them.”

Does anyone really believe GOPe chairman Reince Priebus when he says “It's not a matter of party insiders. It's a matter of 2,400 grassroots activists, and whatever they want to do, they can do.”

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