Republicans settle on a strategy to blunt the effect of new open-primary law.

[TomCADem]

Source: LA Times

When the California Republican Party adopted a plan to survey the state's 5.3 million GOP voters to decide who should be their party's standard-bearer in future elections, the move provided a compromise ending to a contentious battle over how to blunt the voter-approved "top two" primary system.

But there are deep questions and some skepticism over whether the party will be able to afford and administer such an ambitious undertaking.

"I don't think it will ever be implemented," said Allan Hoffenblum, a former GOP strategist and publisher of the nonpartisan California Target Book, which handicaps legislative races. "They punted.… I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see the state party change its mind between now and June 2014."

The move, made at the California Republican Party convention last weekend, was prompted by Proposition 14, which changed the state's electoral system. Under it, candidates from all parties compete in a primary, after which the top two vote-getters compete in a general election — even if they are members of the same party. The ballot measure, approved last year, was intended to create competition and loosen the grip that the state's most partisan voters have on primary elections.


Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-adv-gop-prop14-20110326,0,5333612.story?track=rss

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Once again, Republicans are trying to protect their most extreme elements and the intent of California law to allow all voters to participate in the primaries in State elections. What is really interesting is that in order to finance this parallel pre-primary, Republicans are considering ideas like raising money through advertisements, candidates' fees for inclusion in ballot statements, donations from voters and sponsorships.

Can you imagine, "This Republican candidate primary is brought to you by Exxon."

[xxqqqzme]

1. I live in Orange County

What inroads we have made will be wiped out by prop 14. We will end up w/ two rethuglicans running against each other in the general. This will happen in Riverside and Sam Diego counties as well. Voter turnout will drop to nothing. Democrats and Greens don't vote for rethugs now. Yu think they're going to vote for he lesser of two evil retug teabaggers?

[David__77]

4. I'm confused. Isn't this saying that would not happen?

If there was only one Republican on the ballot in the primary, how could there be more than one in the general?

[rpannier]

2. Could they do that with Presidential elctions

That way the Republican will not even be on the ballot

[bemildred]

3. The history of this in interesting.

We started out with back room deals, then we got primaries and caucuses so the party rank-n-file could have a say, then we got Prop 14 with the purpose of preventing the rigging of party primaries from controlling who has a chance in the GE, and NOW we have the Pubbies wanting to go back to back room deals to keep the old game alive in the GE.

The question will be, if you do this, does it buy you anything in the real world, can you still prevent undesirable candidates (from your point of view) from winning? And can you shoehorn guys who screw the public into office? I don't think so. I think that Prop. 14, if it stands, will undermine party power in a big way.

[gratuitous]

5. The end typical of Republican futzing with the electoral process

It blows up in their rat-like little visages, like the denouement of a Wile E. Coyote scheme. I'm sure this appealed to the extreme elements in the California Republican party, but once the party honchos got a look at the actual numbers of California voters and did their analysis of who was likely to vote how, they realized that they had diluted their voting power because all the nutzoids would be plumping for the no-chance nutzoid of their choice.