Monday, February 11, 2008

MIKE HUCKABEE, HORSERACE, RON PAUL

The Washington GOP Caucus Brouhaha

Mike Huckabee's campaign thinks the Republican party of Washington state declared McCain the winner before the vote was finished being counted — and is contesting the results.

Still, when there's something amiss in Washington state politics, there are two sources I consult, and one is Sound Politics, who suggests this is much ado about nothing:

The first thing to understand is that people do not always vote by presidential preference. In my caucus, and in many others in my pooled caucus, presidential preference never even came up. Only two people wanted the two delegate spots, so we nominated them and elected them.

At the precinct caucus next to ours, there were far more participants than delegates, but a similar story: they all knew each other and just said, "well, who wants to go?," and they picked two to nominate and that was it. Presidential preference never even entered into the equation.

Other caucuses were different: a few active Republicans at a precinct caucus a few tables away didn't get elected, because they were outnumbered by Huckabee supporters.

So to portray this as an election for presidential candidates is a complete misunderstanding, worsened by the fact that your stated presidential preference isn't even binding. You could have written down "McCain" on the sign-in sheet (the only record we have) and then changed your mind and said "Romney" in the caucus, and you'd be marked down for McCain.

Or, Sound Politics notes, caucusgoers can change their mind before the county convention. "And that's assuming you even GO to county convention: many people won't bother, they are just delegates because no one else wanted to do it. And at county convention, we will split up into legislative districts, and for all we know, McCain supporters could all be from a handful of legislative districts, and then be totally outnumbered at state convention."

The surprising conclusion: "For Huckabee to be talking about legal challenges to a completely meaningless result shows that either he has no idea what the results actually mean (nothing), or he is just doing this for show."

As one of his commenters notes, "What the state party is reporting (presidential preference of incoming caucus participants) is meaningless. The preference of the delegates coming out of the caucus is not meaningless. It is a very good indicator of who will be best represented in the next phases of the process ending with the selection of 17 [actually 18, see below] WA GOP delegates. What I am curious is why the state GOP decided to report the more meaningless of the two numbers they could have reported, why they decided to call the results before finishing the count, and why they still have not finished."

The Ron Paul folks believe that they have the most actual committed delegates, who will go to the county conventions and then on to the state convention May 30, and select 18 of the state's delegates to the GOP convention. The other 19 of the state’s delegates are elected by the primary held February 19.

02/11 08:39 AMShare