{"id":12590,"date":"2012-01-06T16:08:51","date_gmt":"2012-01-06T21:08:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=12590"},"modified":"2012-01-06T16:08:51","modified_gmt":"2012-01-06T21:08:51","slug":"jay-cost-on-why-primaries-hurt-conservative-candidates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/12590\/jay-cost-on-why-primaries-hurt-conservative-candidates\/","title":{"rendered":"Jay Cost on Why Primaries Hurt Conservative Candidates"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jay Cost<\/a> of the Weekly Standard<\/em> explains why the current 1970\u2019s era primary system almost always impedes the Party of Reagan from nominating a Reaganite for president.<\/p>\n

So, here\u2019s the question of the day: why can\u2019t the party of Reagan ever seem to nominate a Reaganite?<\/p>\n

My answer: because conservative Republicans are not actually in control of their own party. Though they are its animating force \u2013 they give it policy ideas to implement, they turn out regularly to support the party in good times and bad, they advocate the party and its ideology to their friends, neighbors, and relatives \u2013 they are not in charge, and have not been since the 1970s (arguably the 1920s, but that\u2019s another story altogether).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Later on, Cost describes how GOP moderates maneuver around the conservative base to secure presidential nominations.<\/p>\n

Self-identified conservatives tend to be a majority of most primary electorates, so one would think that, even with the limits of primaries, you\u2019d still get a quality conservative nominee. But that isn\u2019t necessarily the case in a three-way race<\/em>. That\u2019s the final, huge problem with the primaries. They do not build consensus, which ultimately would require the assent of the conservative side of the GOP. Instead, they create a game similar to the show Survivor<\/em> \u2013 \u201coutwit, outplay, outlast.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you are a moderate Republican \u2013 e.g. Bob Dole or John McCain \u2013 you don\u2019t need to win a majority of the conservative vote. You just need to do well enough among moderate Republicans so that you win more votes than your conservative opponents. Then, you simply wait for the media and the party establishment to pressure your conservative challengers into dropping out.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

See if this sounds familiar:<\/p>\n

The rules of the nomination game favor candidates who have the insider connections, can garner positive coverage from the media, can appeal to non-ideological and poorly informed voters, and who can win perhaps just a third of the vote in the early rounds. <\/em>Such candidates are rarely the conservatives. Put another way: conservatives consistently lose because they are not actually in charge of their own party.<\/p>\n

This is why, moving forward, conservatives need to spend serious time and effort thinking about how to fix this screwed up process. Yes, it is important to consider the big policy issues \u2013 tax reform, health care, industrial policy \u2013 but without good rules to produce good nominees who can implement those policies, then it is all for naught.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Food for thought.\u00a0 You can read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jay Cost of the Weekly Standard explains why the current 1970\u2019s era primary system almost always impedes the Party of Reagan from nominating a Reaganite for president. So, here\u2019s the question of the day: why can\u2019t the party of Reagan ever seem to nominate a Reaganite? My answer: because conservative Republicans are not actually in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2033,1193,928,676,2819,3277,1470,2400,456],"class_list":["post-12590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-2033","tag-campaign","tag-conservative","tag-jay-cost","tag-moderate","tag-nomination","tag-president","tag-primary","tag-ronald-reagan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12590"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12593,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12590\/revisions\/12593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}