Four Republican backbencher candidates who failed to qualify for the first 2024 GOP presidential debate this week slammed the Republican National Committee over its rules, with multiple contenders calling them “rigged.”
Elder … said he intended to file an emergency lawsuit to halt the debate from taking place. Businessman Perry Johnson, another GOP candidate, also said he intends to take legal action against the RNC.
I am wholly unclear on how there’s any grounds to litigate about the RNC running a debate. Political parties and their internal operations around how they run their own debates isn’t covered by any law, is it?
Nope.
A couple years ago the DNC had a court case about bias in primaries.
Their legal defense boiled down to:
We’re a private organization beholden to no one, if we wanted to we could ignore every primary vote and nominate anyone, so it literally doesn’t matter if we have a bias.
And the courts agreed, because it’s true.
Our nation is run by two groups of private citizens who can essentially do anything they want.
And we should change that
The primary system in the US still blows my mind.
There are public, state-sanctioned votes to select candidates for private political groups? That’s wild. That gives the impression to the populace that these private organizations are part of the state apparatus itself. It provides an impenetrable legitimacy to those that are already dominant, and makes it so, so much harder for new ones to crop up, because they lack that mantle of legitimacy.
It’s all show, no go.
So here’s a part of the history you (and many others) are actually missing that will help contextualize this. Make no mistake, I have issues with the primaries too. But this is interesting and may even reshape your opinion.
For over a century we couldn’t vote at all on the candidates. They were completely selected by the parties. People actually protested that system saying they had no say in the candidates, and thus the first presidential primary happened in 1912 I believe (forgot the state). It rolled out over the 20th century because people felt it was unfair the party got to select without their input.
While we’re at it, people also forget that presidents and senators were originally intended to be chosen by state legislatures, not the public. The idea was (a) they didn’t trust direct democracy at scale because it was akin to mob rule, as well as (b) it reflects the fact that the States, not the federal government, were supposed to have the majority of the power.
That’s also how we ended up with the Electoral College: it couldn’t be “one legislator, one vote” because state A has vastly more constituents per legislator than state B, so there had to be a sort of ‘compatibility layer’ to even things out.
The upshot is that the system we have today represents a half-assed attempt to switch away from the original design to a direct democracy system, which is why it doesn’t work properly and is inferior to either alternative.
Yeah they really couldn’t imagine a situation where Los Angeles, Columbus, NYC, and St Louis all have more aligned politics with each other than small towns an hour away from each
For over a century we couldn’t vote at all on the candidates. They were completely selected by the parties.
You understand that that’s how it works most other places, right? The candidates that are supported by private organizations are chosen by those organizations. Because they’re private. And because that support is not state sanctioned. Having a party affiliation on your campaign sign just means that you are supported, financially and otherwise, by that party.
The flip side is that independent candidates are fairly common.
And if you want input as to which candidate the private organization supports in a public election, you join the private organization. You pay your dues, you show up to meetings, and you vote on who you think the party should support in the next election.
Meanwhile, in the US, you have people declaring themselves “lifelong Democrats” or “lifelong Republicans” who have never, ever been affiliated with the party. They just vote for whoever is their candidate every time. And maybe they show up to vote in the primaries, further entrenching the illusion that they’re part of the organization.
But that’s all it is: an illusion. The reality is that primaries are nothing more than A/B tests to see which candidates stand to do best in the actual, real election. They’re market research surveys that let you LARP as party members, and which get made to look official and legitimate by being run by state electoral officers.
Which means they’re private market research surveys that you pay for.
Please do not talk down to me. Nothing I said indicates I think this is standard. I was giving the historical context for why it is that way in the US. So please don’t come at me with this “well actually” nonsense please. It’s needlessly hostile.
The flip side is that independent candidates are fairly common.
That’s not the result of not having people vote in primaries. That’s generally the result of a parliamentary system, which is more common than anything resembling the US’s representative democracy system.
As for the rest of your comment, you’re grinding an axe over something I did not say.
That’s what happens when 99% of the people making the rules belong to one of those two private groups…
And why the founding fathers were explicitly against political parties.
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I was curious and it turns out that the FEC does have regulation regarding public debates.
The part that would be relevant doesn’t seem to apply, though:
c. Criteria for candidate selection.
For all debates, staging organization(s) must use pre-established objective criteria to determine which candidates may participate in a debate. For general election debates, staging organizations(s) shall not use nomination by a particular political party as the sole objective criterion to determine whether to include a candidate in a debate. For debates held prior to a primary election, caucus or convention, staging organizations may restrict candidate participation to candidates seeking the nomination of one party, and need not stage a debate for candidates seeking the nomination of any other political party or independent candidates.
So, I guess there is a law that could be potentionally sued over, but I don’t see how the RNC doesn’t fall within the guidelines. I’m not a lawyer.
Americans have an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of frivolous lawsuits.
Political parties exist for the sole purpose of rigging politics by disenfranchising the public. Their entire existence is a kind of corrupt, elitist caste system.
These organizations need to be treated the same way as corporations that get too big: they should forcibly split up. Force parties to form coalitions to get anything done, like in other parliamentary systems. Take away their corrupt levers - like FPTP voting (force RCV instead) and dark money, and return power to the people instead tolerating it in the hands of a couple private, invite-only cabals.
Political parties should be outlawed, not just split up. It should be a crime to include a party affiliation next to a candidate’s name on a ballot. (Or an indication of which is the incumbent, for that matter.)
The issue I always find in the proposal to ban political parties is: how do you stop people from just reinventing them under a different name?
It absolutely would happen. Even if we somehow wiped the idea from everyone’s mind, people would start to group up again because it’s simply more effective than going it alone. We learned that as a species a long time ago.
Yes, like Seattle Seahawks, or Chicago Bears…
Politics really would become a contest between sports teams.
Obviously, you can’t stop people from freely associating (see the First Amendment).
But that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that the current two major political parties have been given a whole bunch of special privileges that make them quasi-official parts of the government, and all those need to be permanently stripped away.
I fully agree. This vote by tribe sh*t HAS to stop. Humanity SHOULD be better than f*cking tribal yawping.
As much as I am against the two-party system I am not in favor of sacrificing our right to assembly, especially in the context of assembling over shared politics, on the altar of “hopefully that’ll make elections go better.”
I made zero statements about restricting peoples’ speech. Merely that humanity should be more intelligent than basic tribalism.
If a basic competency test offends you, I really do not know what to say…
No one has mentioned overt political gatekeeping. Just basic competency that we ask of all citizens. If that is too much to ask, then I’m afraid you have no idea what contributes to a competent leader…
To make political parties illegal is an attack on free-speech and the right to peaceful assembly. You would have to directly violate the first amendment in order to ban political parties.
I hope you are not being literal with your concept of a “competency test.”
We also need to change the voting system too. Approval voting is ideal for a no-party system. All candidates getting approved by some min number of people get elected.
I don’t know why it bothers me so much given that every GOP candidate is scum. But it especially irks me that Doug Burgum can get a spot in the debates by giving away $20 gift cards to those who donated $1.
The party of calling elections rigged is facing complaints that their election process is rigged
Exactly why I posted this article. It’s clear other GOP politicians are taking pages from Turmp’s playbook and we will likley have to deal with his form of politics for long after he is removed from the political arena.
Slam
Let the boys be boys.
Does it really matter? Trump is getting the nomination. We can stop pretending it’s 2016 and someone else has a shot.
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That doesn’t prevent him from being the nominee. He’s also got some of the best Healthcare in the world that already knows he’s fat, old, and unhealthy and I’m sure they are doing what they can to keep him alive as long as possible.
You’re acting like he is a normal human being bothered by the same things a normal human being is.
It’s not about winning.
It’s about the free advertising so they can grift donations. Running for president can make you millions and can be used as a slush fund for years after the campaign.
Especially if you never try to actually win.
going to be difficult when a few states bar him from the ballot. thats why this is so hilarious
This is B.S.
The lack of debate, or the material they planned on regurgitating during the debate?
Naw. There were four who didn’t meet the qualifiers to participate
While Trump is skipping the debate ― and has said he’ll also sit out all future GOP debates ― eight of his Republican rivals will be vying for runner-up at the event in Milwaukee.
Unnecessarily brutal paragraph. Polling shifts quickly this far away from the actual election, and people are still starting to tune in. Trump is obviously a heavy favorite but the downside is obviously possible too with the indictments. He’s a heavy favorite but not the prohibitive favorite.
“This is B.S.,” conservative radio host Larry Elder complained in a video he shared online. “It is designed, in my opinion, to ensure that [Florida Gov.] Ron DeSantis is the nominee — anybody other than Donald Trump.”
Jesus Christ, even when attempting to be nominated, he has to make it about Trump. Like even when he feels he’s facing injustice, it’s not just that they’re screwing him over, but it’s all part of their master plan to ensure Trump isn’t somehow the nominee. Like what if you actually became runner up? Was your goal to capitulate to Trump automatically?
It really is hard to separate the Republican party from Trump at this point. For many, DeSantis’ biggest sin is that he isn’t Trump. Every action by active members seems to be to win Trump’s favor. Even DeSantis has to oil his feet despite being his political rival. The fact that Trump won’t be participating in the debates, yet will still likely be nominated shows how much he actually controls the Republican party.
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Hanging Meme:
Republican can’t get into Presidential Debate - “This is outrageous! This is Bullshit! I’m going to sue!”
Smirking Libertarian looking sideways - “First time?”
