In politics, we too often allow the passions of the most recent battle dictate our future decisions without always properly thinking about the unintended consequences that might come. The anger or frustration over losing a political fight can manifest itself in several ways. The fury of the method of how to nominate candidates has become such a force of division with RPV that it has become a tool that factions use against each other. People who have supported conventions now support primaries and vice versa based on personal feuds. It’s almost byzantine to follow at this point.
Sen. Mark Obenshain just announced he will be looking to pass party registration in Virginia. I can’t even begin to count how many times I’ve heard conservatives say they would support primaries so long as there was party registration. It seems to have been the one compromise that exists to end this near decade long war over primaries versus conventions. The divide has on the surface been between conservatives and establishment, but that is not entirely accurate when you dig deeper. With the infusion of rouge elements like the Ron Paul libertarians of 2012 and the Donald Trump populist of this year, the divide is murkier. Libertarians used the convention process to exercise an out-sized influence on the party, while the populists now rage against conventions after what happened in Harrisonburg earlier this year. Establishment Republicans saw their leader Eric Cantor crash and burn in a primary, while Ed Gillespie beat back his tea party challenge successfully in a convention. The roads are no longer straight, but full of complicated intersections.
I have to be honest, I actually have no problem with our current open primary system (awaiting pitchforks). My problem with party registration has nothing to with the sound and fury of our internal fights but rather the energy of how a party runs and who runs it. Are we an organization that has the party run its people or people that run the party? That, for me, is the core question. Party registration is about control. It doesn’t matter what side of the fence you are on, party registration puts the party, and whoever is running it, in a position to define what a Republican is. I prefer Republicans ourselves to mobilize our voters through an open ballot to decide that question. I don’t need whoever sits in the building on Grace Street to tell me otherwise.
Party registration is just as restrictive as a convention and just as amiable to manipulation. As someone who has supported both Paul and Trump (to an extent), I see why so many want party registration. The party doesn’t want people involved that they cannot control. Conservatives and tea partiers gravitated toward conventions in the past because they were more motivated in their smaller numbers, but the establishment caught up on that game in Roanoke back in 2014. Trump supporters, many of whom are lapsed Democrats or lapsed voters in general, saw how they can get their legs cut out from under them at a convention. Primaries, when competitive and not restricted like in 2012, allow for our candidates to bring in as many voters as they can possible find and help grow the party.
A common smear on the Donald Trump campaign was that it was a vehicle for Democrats to interfere in GOP business. I can’t say that it didn’t happen at all, but Trump’s voters aren’t Democrats. They aren’t necessarily affiliated but these are people we want to engage. Nothing makes you feel more excluded that being told you can’t vote for your preferred candidate because you won’t register or have to spend all day at an arena. What are we so afraid of? Let’s gamble that our candidates are better than theirs, both in internal fights and with the Democrats, mobilize and grow. Party registration won’t grow the party, it will just create a political ruling class that controls who gets in and who gets out. I say, let the leaders in our party be the ones that squirm at who votes for our candidates. Let’s give our candidates the largest amount of potential voters to go out and win over with their messages and let the chips fall where they may.
Don’t be controlled, don’t support party registration.
20 comments
A good post on this subject, http://thejeffersoniad.com/blog/2016/12/29/party-registration-is-a-halfway-house-to-kill-conventions/
Then let’s elect our party chair and national committeeman by primaries then.
Registration by party the magic bean that will solve all the Virginia Republican parties’ statewide issues and inabilities to win a statewide contest. Ha! I only warn beware of faction agendas, power plays and control of who makes it into the candidate selection process and who is excluded in “you the voter’s” best interests of course, that likely will accompany this goose and it’s golden eggs.
The implication here is that the state’s party failures is due to those evil Democrats playing games in the Republican state’s party nomination and election process system rather then the constantly retread candidates put forward accompanied by a complete lack of innovative policy solutions for the working and middle class that the state’s voters consistently reject election after election.
This is not only circling the wagons it’s radically reducing the circumference of the circle itself. After all who really needs those 40% plus that identify themselves as voting independents in the state in your tent just let them wander over and attach themselves to the flourishing Democratic statewide election cycle. To win you first need to understand the context of the contest situation and what is called for to accomplish the successful end goal. This waste of time fails miserably on both criteria.
Agree
Good for you Chris. I am not going to support any other process in VA except convention. This is what Cuccinelli tried to push at the RNC and it’s still smells.
We don’t have conventions, we have orchestrated ‘el grande’ mass meetings that we pretend are conventions, with secret ballots, because we’re republicans right?
This is what happens when elected are allowed to manipulate the party process. This happens with primary’s too.
Weak party, strong electeds have led us to where we are now — we need to drain the RPV swamp.
Amen my friend, Amen! I’ve got a plan if you got some time!
Sorry, Mr. Yensho, but your own comment undermines your position. “It [governmental party registration] simply defines the teammates and therefore qualified participants in Primaries and Party functions such as mass meetings.” Why, yes indeed, it does.
Which is exactly the point.
And WHO, I might ask, should be doing the defining? Clearly, supporters of governmental party registration believe the government should. And make no mistake — that’s what we’re talking about here — government-defined membership in a private organization.
Like Ralph describes, governmental party registration exists in many states (Maryland being a nearby example). Thus many people from other states have lived for many years under a government control regime, and then move to Virginia wondering why we do not. Those other states also often have far weaker state and local parties.
Virginia is one of a handful of states where a state party can operate successfully and independently of its elected officials’ direct control, due in large measure to our control over our own membership and our own internal processes. Sure, elected officials seek to exercise as much influence as they can on the parties — they will always have a powerful incentive to do so, no matter what the system is. But give elected officials governmental party registration, and it will only heighten their control over the parties.
Imagine a scenario where a Russ Potts or a Robert Sarvis runs initially as a Republican (as each man did), then years later runs as an independent or Libertarian candidate against our GOP nominee (as each man did, respectively, probably costing Ed Gillespie a U.S. Senate seat, for example), and then just re-registering as a Republican and running uncontested for a lower level nomination (say House of Delegates or State Senate). Such a candidate would be completely free from any party decisions that he should be ineligible for its nomination, because the GOVERNMENT would have declared him to be a Republican in good standing. And under the law, he’d be our NOMINEE in that subsequent race. This is EXACTLY how it works currently in states that have governmental party registration.
Is this really what we want in Virginia?
Yes, Mr. Yensho, you are correct — defining party membership can be messy and time consuming. And, yes, there are the occasional challenges that arise regarding who should and should not participate in our processes. BUT, the overriding virtue of our current system is that WE, the PARTY, get to decide those questions. There is NOTHING in state law that bars us from allowing every registered voter in Virginia from participating in our processes, if we so desire it. So governmental party registration is a red herring and a solution in search of a problem.
Chris Beer is 100% correct when he says that many convention supporters would prefer primaries if we only had governmental party registration. I have always found that distressing.
Anyone who knows me knows I have always been 100% pro-convention, but I have also always been 200% anti-primary. So, no, governmental party registration would not make primaries palatable. It would make them worse, by dragging government even DEEPER into our internal processes.
This comment isn’t designed to litigate the convention vs. primary question — another discussion for another posting — but it IS designed to wake up the pro-convention crowd that governmental party registration will only make things immensely worse.
We have been able to strangle this baby in its crib numerous times before, so it’s a shame we seem to have to re-fight this battle yet again.
If you want government to STAY OUT of party nomination processes, then contact your legislators and tell them to kill this stink bomb at the first level he or she can — in subcommittee, in committee, on the floor, or in conference.
The state already has laws as far as political parties right?
Yes, the state has passed myriad unconstitutional laws interfering with the First Amendment free association rights of political parties. Your point?
My point was that the state code that establishes and confirms the two party system is already in place in Virginia.
You could not be more mistaken. The state code does NOT establish the two-party system. All political parties, since they are PRIVATE, not public, organizations, created themselves. The state code does extend unconstitutional privileges to the Republican and Democrat parties. But this only argues for repealing all those laws, not adding new ones.
Well if it extends privileges to the two parties, that kind of establishes them right?
That would be like saying that since the government extends tax exempt status to to churches, like the Roman Catholic Church, it created them. The assertion is patently ridiculous. Government does not create political parties (or churches) — political parties create themselves, like all other private organizations. And private organizations in the United States have First Amendment free association rights, so government has no business interfering in those free association rights, especially when it comes to defining that organization’s members.
I like it the way it is in our Commonwealth.
I concur with Chris. For me it’s basically a privacy issue. I don’t want the Commonwealth of Virginia maintaining a record of my political preferences. I have lived in States with Party registration. One State I know of allows you to look up a voter by just using their name and birth date and Voila! you have their party preference. Another I lived in allows this just by address and name.
The other problem is how do you control the registration by Party relevant to primaries (or party run processes if they will still exist)? Will there be a control date before a Primary where you can’t switch? A lot of questions.
They do already, you can see in the voting record whether and in which primaries you have participated.
Sorry Chris, but the Party doesn’t decided who is in or out, that is up to the Individual citizen to choose. Party leadership currently spends untold hours in phone calls, emails and the appeals process playing referee over who did or did not solicit Democrat participation in mass meetings, Conventions, etc. General Councils also spend too much of their valuable donated time in Party squabbles over deciding if Democrats voted at the County or District level. We need to address this issue and simply align with the Party that is closest to our political ideology, get involved and fix the system. Sitting on the sidelines, pointing fingers, hurling insults, and back seat driving doesnt help change one thing at the BOS, Richmond, or Washington. I lived in two states that had Party registration and it worked just fine; you registered R or D or I and only voted in Primaries of your chosen Party. Everyone of course voted in the General. Registration dies not grant any more power to the State or the RPV. It simply defines the teammates and therefore qualified participants in Primaries and Party functions such as mass meetings.