I call it:
Survivor: GOP Primary!
Here’s my beef with the primaries as they are currently formatted: the most disliked candidates aren’t necessarily eliminated early on, so long as they have some support in a large and highly divided field.
Right now, our presumptive nominee is John McCain. McCain does have some very enthusiastic supporters. But they are a relatively small number compared to the GOP as a whole across the nation. Many of those supporting McCain at this point are only doing so because no one else still in the campaign really motivates them. More importantly, though, a clear majority of GOP members currently want someone other than McCain. A 35% vote in a multi-person primary only really means that 65% of the Party supported someone else.
But, despite his high negatives within the Party, McCain is not just clinging to life but leading the pack, because the votes in the primary are votes FOR, not votes AGAINST.
So here’s the plan:
We need a “Survivor-style” primary elimination competition.
The process would begin with a “pre-screening” of potential candidates through pre-primary caucuses, petitions, straw polls, etc. Before January of election year, allow this process to put together a field of eight candidates. Why eight? Why not? I picked eight because, at one point in this primary season, there were eight GOP candidates. It could be more or less – just modify the following as necessary to make it work.
Once you have the eight competitors, begin a series of seven primaries to eliminate one, and only one, candidate each primary. Have a debate. Not a CNN or YouTube debate, where the candidates face questions by liberals designed to make the candidates look bad. No, have a GOP debate with actual REPUBLICANS asking the questions for REPUBLICANS to get answers so REPUBLICANS can vote. Have a series of fundraising events. Let the candidates tour the states featured in the first primary (more on choosing the states later). Then, have a closed primary at the end of January. Only registered Republicans need apply. Put out an elimination ballot. Instruct all the voters: choose one candidate to REMOVE from this race. Then, after the first primary, we have seven candidates still “on the island.”
Start the process again in February. Eliminate another. Repeat. Keep doing this through July, when you will be down to two candidates left standing – and in the final round, let it be a competition to WIN instead of an elimination. Have the vote at the end of the month, right before the convention in August.
Why do this?
Because this allows the primary system to actually weed out candidates we don’t like. The current system doesn’t weed out unpopular candidates. It weeds out candidates who might have very low negatives, but who don’t have the resources to remain competitive. Sometimes we get a great candidate in the end, like Ronald Reagan. Other times, we end up with Bob Dole. Or John McCain. Right now, John McCain is the most likely GOP nominee despite having never received majority support of actual Republicans. He’s in this position not because he is the popular choice of the Party, but because he has maintained just enough tepid support in a multi-person race to cling to life as alternatives have been forced out - had the primary elections been true eliminations instead of competitions for nominal support, would McCain still be here?
What would have happened in this primary season had we been using the Survivor model? Let’s hypothesize:
Letting the pre-primary system do its thing, assume we had the same eight candidates at the beginning of this race. They are:
John McCain, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Duncan Hunter, and Tom Tancredo.
Now, here is round one:
It’s January. All the candidates take part in the debates. All have their fundraisers. All campaign across primary states. Here we are at the end of the month. We have our first primary, in about 8 states (again, more on this later). Seven candidates move forward. One is voted off the island. Remember, it’s not a contest to see who can get the most FOR votes. It’s a competition to avoid being the one with the most NO votes. My guess:
Ron Paul is off the island.
Sure, he has rabid followers. Sure, he can raise big money by tapping into angsty angry anti-establishment internet dorks and anti-war leftists. But, I believe, a vast majority of GOP voters would recognize him as a kook who brings nothing to this race. His isolationist, anti-war, blame America rhetoric may appeal to 5% of the Party, but it outright angers a solid majority of us.
Bye bye, Paul. Don’t let the doorknob hit you on the way out.
Then we move on to February. Same thing, but seven remain. Have debates. Have fundraisers. Campaign across new states. Vote. Who is gone? My guess:
Farewell, Rudy. The tribe has spoken.
Rudy may be America’s Mayor. He may have a lot of support among moderates and among the defense hawks. Personally, I really like him and would not vote against him (at least, not until the last round). But… a lot of Republicans really hate the idea of President Giuliani. He would have all the Right to Life groups out there actively campaigning against him. When RTL actively opposes you in a closed GOP primary, you are in trouble.
Sorry, Rudy. I like you, but my support isn’t enough.
March. You know that term, “March Madness”? It would apply here. Six remain. Repeat the process. Who leaves?
McCain.
McCain, probably more than any other candidate, really angers some people. With the kook Paul gone, and the pro-choice Giuliani gone, the movement conservatives will look at the field and say “you know, just about any of these other guys would be ok for us, but man, I really hate that McCain.” He might have 35% support, but remember, that’s 65% against. And a lot of that 65% is STRONGLY against.
John McCain, pack your bags.
April. Now it gets interesting. Thompson, Hunter, and Tancredo all have solid conservative credentials. None of them managed to inspire majority support in this year’s actual primary. But, none of them ever got a solid bloc of GOP voters ticked off enough to force them out. Huckabee and Romney, however, each have problems. Huckabee has some very fervent supporters. But he also has really alienated some non-evangelical voters, and has drawn harsh criticisms from fiscal conservatives and defense hawks. Romney has his own detractors who just don’t like his changing attitudes or his slick packaging. I couldn’t tell you who would be out this round, but it would be either Huckabee or Romney.
May. Same thing, but now the other one from April is gone.
June comes around. The field now consists of Thompson, Hunter, and Tancredo. Now it comes down to one candidate who not only is inoffensive to a majority of Republicans but also has some energetic supporters and a degree of “electability” against the democrats… and Hunter and Tancredo. No clue which of the also-rans is gone, but Thompson surely moves on to the final.
July: hail Fred Thompson, GOP nominee.
August rolls around, and Fred chooses a VP as the convention begins…
This is a primary system that gives us a consensus candidate who does not isolate huge parts of the GOP base. Every state has had a say at some point in the process. Oh, here’s the plan for dividing the primaries:
Take all the states by size. Divide into seven groups, from smallest to largest, with the seven or eight largest voting in the final round. The smallest states get to vote first.
Why?
I like the Electoral College. I like smaller states getting a slightly larger say for their size. This makes the small states relevant. In this primary, the majority of candidates have to work in the small states right at the beginning, and the small states get to actually eliminate the worst candidates up front. The big states have the large populations, and the majority of actual voters have the final say on who wins and who loses. It’s a check and balance.
So round one would look like this:
Wyoming, District of Columbia, Vermont, North Dakota, Alaska, South Dakota, and Delaware.
That’s a pretty diverse group, geographically and ideologically. Making the candidates campaign across all seven of these before the elimination vote ensures the candidates need to appeal to a broad demographic, instead of pandering to a small audience like the Iowa Farm Bureau. You have East and West. You have New England and the Plains. You have rural and urban. You have coastal and interior. You have extremely conservative and more moderate. It’s a good mix.
Round two:
Montana, Rhode Island, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Maine, Idaho, and Nebraska.
Again, a broad mix. No allowing candidates to pander to one small group.
Round three:
West Virginia, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Kansas, Arkansas, and Mississippi.
Here it gets interesting: for the first time, the mix starts to look like a collection of Red States. Now that two of the weakest candidates have been eliminated, a group of solid Red States that represents real Republican values has its chance to eliminate.
Round four:
Iowa, Connecticut, Oklahoma, Oregon, Kentucky, Louisiana, and South Carolina.
Another group with mostly Red States. The Party Base is having its say to weed out the undesirable.
Round five:
Alabama, Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Maryland, Missouri, and Tennessee.
Back to a broader mix, and populations are growing. Now we are starting to see what a majority of the population, as opposed to the Electoral College, might look like.
Round Six:
Arizona, Indiana, Massachusetts, Washington, Virginia, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Georgia.
Now we are cooking. Here’s some serious diversity, including some of the biggest Red States. And we have some big population centers like Phoenix, Boston, and Atlanta. This is a great setup for the final showdown.
Round seven – the final vote, winner take all:
Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Florida, New York, Texas and California.
The final round brings in the biggest chunks of the population. It has the biggest of all Red States in Texas, forcing the candidates to truly appeal to Republicans. It also has the biggest state of all in California, allowing California Republicans a chance to choose a candidate who can appeal to a broad base for the general. And it has all the most important swing states like Florida and Ohio, giving us the chance to choose the candidate who can bring in those critical Electoral College delegates.
This is a winning plan. It brings the Party together, rather than driving the Party apart. The divisive candidates get eliminated early. The remaining candidates are those who represent real Republican values. The final winner is one who never alienated a large segment of the base and who, in the end, proves to be the better of the two finalists. Interestingly, it might result in candidates forming alliances, like on Survivor, to work against other candidates in the early rounds. This would give us a chance to see how certain candidates work with each other, and might give us insight into things like who a potential nominee's VP might be, who might get choice Cabinet appointments, etc. It would be interesting and informative, for instance, to see if Giuliani and McCain teamed up early on to try getting someone like Romney voted out earlier. It would truly give the voters a look into the minds of the candidates.
We need to enact a primary system like this! If only…
