The Utah GOP has the most progressive, base oriented, and accountable political system in the entire realm of party politics within the United States.At least compared to those I am aware of (wise me up and I will update this thread).
Forget constitutional term limits, these voters can remove an incumbent with a delegate vote:
With three rounds of voting, all but the top three candidates were eliminated after the first round. Delegates then voted a second time, whittling down the field again — that was where Mr. Bennett lost, coming in third with about 27 percent of the delegates’ support. A final round determines whether a primary election needs to be held. A candidate needs at least 60 percent of the vote to become the party’s candidate, and at least 40 percent to qualify for the primary election on June 22.(NY Times). They removed an incumbent who had been in power for 18 years, following his father before him.
As I understand it, local voters choose delegates to a state wide convention, which then convenes to decide who will be the Republican candidates to take part in the upcoming Republican primary.
Incumbents are not automatically selected, and more than that, can even be rejected.
That incumbent, if voted out at that convention, then can't even take part in the primary in terms of being on the ballot.
Talk about smooth, quick, and complete accountability, this is the ticket.
Kudos to those who designed that brilliant system (even though I am not a Republican).
I guess I like this idea overall; but, realize that the short term results in this particular case will be the nomination of an even more extreme GOP candidate (which I'm fine with).
ReplyDeleteI heard parts of a Noam Chomsky talk on NPR Sunday where he was discussing the failure of the center to hold, and this (Bob Bennet's failure to hold a longtime GOP seat) would seem to be yet another example of that.
The obvious counterargument to that is, that while the GOP is pulling hard right at an ever faster pace, the Dems are merely following suit rather than pulling equally hard left.
The successful demonization of the word liberal will go down as one of the greatest political master strokes in American history. It's truly been a game changer, and IMO, has spelled the end of the republic as we know it, as it has essentially resulted in one party rule.
All politics is overwhelmingly conservative and corporate now, and the results are staring us in the face daily.
It can cost zillions to get rid of an incumbent otherwise.
ReplyDeleteThis gives non-MOMCOM money people a better shot at rogue and mavericky (from their viewpoint) incumbents who tend to hoard the money.
Oh yeah, they got rid of a more moderate candidate for a far more to the right potential candidate.
Think what would happen if all senators and presidents had to face the base.
Lieberman, Obama, etc. would have stayed with his base or bite the dust like Bennett did.
Lie-berman's base in Conn is conservative - so much so that he won anyway when the Dems nominated a real liberal - and Obama, if he wins again in 2012, will win on the back of his real conservative base. Obama claiming to be a liberal democrat amounts to nothing more than election fraud. One good thing, we won't have to worry about the two-faced bastard getting assasinated - MOMCOM will make damn sure of that. He's been better for business and war than Bush/Cheney ever were. Obama - the "liberal" curse that keeps on giving.
ReplyDeleteThe state efforts to limit terms of members of congress failed.
ReplyDeleteCongress is not likely to try to amend the Constitution to limit terms of its members or the power of incumbency.
So when states and state parties, like in Utah, make provisions that have all the power of a constitutional term-limiting amendment, they have out foxed the fox.
They can remove an incumbent from the ballot with a simple vote of their caucus if the incumbent goes rogue and gets mavericky.
If Lieberman had been in Utah and his caucus voted him out, he would not be on the printed state ballot at the primary. Like Bennett.
If the same held for the president, he could be stopped from even running for a second term if he dissed the people who elected him.
Its all good.