Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Colorado GOP Executive Committee says "No voting on Presidential candidates at your caucus."

We'll hear more about this, but based on what I know now, here is what I think of this.

The Colorado GOP leaders last Friday met and discussed several issues. One was a rule change by the Republican National Committee that says if there is a vote on the Presidential candidates in any way, that vote has to be binding on the delegates.

This creates many problems, states are going to react and probably get this changed, maybe by the time of the national convention. But maybe not.

So the Colorado Republican leadership did the smart thing. They decided to no hold a Presidential candidate straw poll. They've gone back to the system that worked so well in the past for Colorado Republicans.

The straw poll came along after Colorado had the disastrous experiment with a Presidential primary.  When Colorado voters had the good sense to go back to what had worked so well since 1912, the straw poll was an attempt to drag the primary home, sort of a take-out primary.

That's not the way it worked in the past.

Delegates will get elected and they have to first attend their precinct caucus. Is there discussion about the Presidential race at the caucus? Of course. Delegates are elected to go to various nominating assemblies. Do those in their caucus know those delegates feeling about the Presidential candidates that night? Of course. But things might change. And some delegates will be elected who say it's way to early to make up their mind.

Sometimes there is a steamroller, the caucuses are all packed, only one candidate has delegates elected across the state. When that happens, the straw poll doesn't make any difference, either.

Seems to me the GOP has done the smart thing. We'll see.

I just posted this as a comment on the Denver Post article concerning this GOP decision. You can see a link to that article on our Colorado Caucus News Facebook Page  http://Facebook.com/Colorado.Caucus.News 

In our representative system we should be voting for the best possible people to go as delegates and represent us. Vote for the delegate or slate of delegates that will make the best decision on the floor of the convention based on full information. Sounds to me like this is a move to strengthen the GOP Colorado delegation. Should be good for Colorado.

1 comment:

John Scott Wren said...

The smartest delegates have always gone to the RNC national convention uncommitted. Bill Armstrong did so in a steam roller year whey only delegates who were 100% committed to Regan were elected. Except for Bill. He stood up in front of the delegates to the 5th Congressional Assembly in Castle Rock and shed light on why being uncommitted was such a good thing for Colorado. Bill needs to repeat that talk now, while more have a chance to benefit from his wisdom.