An interesting sidelight to my column today… something I didn’t have room for:
In discussing the latest partisan outrage — the SC Republican Party’s plans to push for voter registration by party (the worst idea I’ve heard since the SC Democrats last year almost required a loyalty oath to vote in their presidential primary) — state GOP Chairman Katon Dawson happened to mention that "I think a number of the people in my party who are for it come from other states," where they were accustomed to partisan registration, and, being partisan, thought it was great.
That made sense to me, especially when Katon later mentioned of the party-registration idea, "It’s a pretty good-sized movement. It started in Beaufort County." If there’s anyplace in South Carolina where the county GOP is likely to be chock-full of carpetbaggers, it’s there. When I made that observation (more politely, without the little jest about carpetbaggers), Katon protested that I was being unfair to the Beaufort County organization. But come on — Hilton Head?
I guess I want to believe that because I’d hate to think that any of my fellow Southerners would suggest it’s a good idea to go back to denying our neighbors the right to vote for indefensible reasons.
I also suspect that if you did a poll, you’d find that Republicans from sparsely populated rural counties would be less enamored of this idea than those in the larger metro areas. Why? Because in small towns, people learn to live together with different kinds of people, whereas suburbanites pay a premium to live in neighborhoods where they don’t have to talk to people who don’t think the way they do. This is true of both parties.
Katon, being a city boy himself, is for this monstrous idea. He’s a nice guy, but even the nicest guys have their flaws.
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I personally don’t have a problem at all with limiting the voting in primaries to members of a specific party.
Mr Warthen notes that the end result is that the political candidates in the presidential races are chosen by two particular ends of the political specturm. That may be true. But given that the Republican poltical candidate is supposed to represent – get this – the Republican party (shocking!) why would the Republican party want non-Republicans to have a say in who represents them? Ditto for the Democrats.
If the 1/3 of “reasonable” voters (and I’d even dispute that characterization) in the “middle” don’t like the nominees, they are free to form their own organization, nominate their own candidates, restrict voting to members of their own club which wold result in a candidate who reflects their political views.
As a member of one of the organizations who provides news coverage to the candidates, I would ask Mr Warthen why it is that only the Democratic and Republican candidates get any serious media coverage? Whither the Libertarian Party? Why does it take name recognition (Nader, Buchanan, Perot) to get a “third party” any recognition? Why denigrate them by continuing to refer to them as “third parties”?
If Mr Warthen is concerned that the political process is being hijacked by the partisans on the “two sides” then perhaps he should realize that there are more than two sides, and offer that middle 1/3 of the electorate an opportunity to choose someone other than the choice of the partisans.
Political parties are important, but I never joined one for basically Marxist reasons. The dilemma is that you and I may want to have a say in selecting all of the candidates for an office, a role that really belongs to the parties, whether Republican, Democrat, Green, or Mad Hatter. In each election the ballot for state and federal offices present candidates by party affiliation, an indication that the candidate is the choice of party members.
With open primaries (no oath or proof of party membership required) parties fear that “the other guys” will vote for the weakest of the party’s candidates in order to steal the general election. This primal fear is supported by what researchers call the “Judy Success Syndrome,” a malady manifest in party leaders’ pronouncements:
”It’s my party,” I can cry if I want to, and even close primary attendance to non-party members. Thus fear of failure is one reason they want to keep it closed; they fear that they’ll have to work too hard to get back what they had.
The weak point in your position is that any voter may vote in only one party primary. Any independent can influence the outcome of only one party per primary/election sequence, and therefore faces a dilemma if s/he really likes a Democrat for one office and a Mad Hatterite for another. Do you regard that as fair? Allowing voters to vote in all (currently both, since only two parties hold primaries in SC) primaries would lead to tremendous opportunities for gaming, and that too is not desirable.
One solution — Louisiana’s non-partisan primary system — is quite controversial and seems to favor extremists to the detriment of moderates. You might argue that the current system does too, but that does not account for the differences between our two US senators who are from the same party.
One very important role that parties play is that their candidates represent, or should represent, the philosophy and value system of that party. One failure of the parties in my view is that their platforms are not well-engineered. I’d like to see platforms with several general principles followed by detailed policy objectives developed from the principles and presented in a hierarchical form. Such an approach would assist the parties in developing a form of logic for their platforms – it would be hard, controversial, but well worth the effort because it would assist party members in understanding what the durn thing they belong to is all about, allowing them to work through inconsistencies.
In the interests of full disclosure I note that as a conservative I do tend to vote for candidates of the party represented by this snake and mascara guy and this dreamy-eyed balladeer with asbestos briefs.
Just as an aside: interestingly, you attribute a negative connotation to “Carpetbaggers”, but clearly, according to your source: “Carpet-bagging was commonly perceived by white Southerners as a threat to the status quo; whites feared that carpetbaggers would bring racial equality and ‘black rule.'” Then, at least a portion of the opposition to carpetbaggers, and the agenda promoted by them in this case, would be based on it’s perceived potential to positively effect race relations, versus maintenance of the status quo. The Democrat Party seems hellbent on denying an equal playing field to both Republicans, and blacks.
C’mon, Brad. You’ve got to be more insightful than your column indicated.
I’ll cut to the chase for you: the problem is money and the entire party system in the U.S.
Political parties in the U.S. don’t exist to represent ideologies per se. The people in the parties adopt ideologies that benefit them economically and socially.
I think that your resentment of the member-only primary is understandable but hare-brained.
Parties are quasi-private organizations. If I’m a party member why would I want to open the process of selecting my party’s leader to the opposition or any uninformed voter who happens by the poll? The party is paying for the election and, presumably the party faithful have paid for the candidates’ campaign.
As Reagan famously said, “I’M paying for this microphone…”
If you’ve got a beef with the restricted primary then you should start by proposing restructuring the enire U.S. political process.
I think that could be a good idea. I believe that our Founders were extremely wary of political parties.
I should have the choice to vote without having to declare my political party affiliation. All party candidates don’t necessarily represent my feelings about all the issues. If a member of another party represents my positions better then I should be allowed to vote for them.
The fact that political parties have become quasi-private organizations isn’t justification for passing a law that restricts my freedom of choice. What has been said is the equivalent of saying, “That’s how we’ve always done it”. That is not a reasonable response to this issue.