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I’m not a big fan of Newt, but I am an attorney who has worked ballot access cases, and it would be a mistake to dump this all on Newt and all the other candidates who didn’t survive the signature war in VA. The RNC did push the whole national process forward. This is akin to rushing the passer. A hurried pass often leads to disaster. Newt and his team were doubtless trying to respond to all 50 fronts in the accelerated ballot access battle, and it may be they simply didn’t have the money to buy the ground troops necessary to pull off a highly technical play like VA. That’s not necessarily a demonstration of an organizational skills deficit.

BTW, Illinois is bad too. Not the same rules exactly, but if they were the same, good luck finding 40 let alone 400 eligible R’s in some districts. Big money and two or more years of advance planning with party cooperation could do it. Being the beneficiary of a recent popular surge, not so much. Advantage, money.

And so while I get the “rule of law” thing, please recall that here in America the highest law is the Constitution, and one of the highest functions of that constitutional law is to protect our right to put the people on the ballot that we believe best represent our interests. It is the very soul of the rule of law that the rules of the parties are and should be subordinate to that higher principle. If the majority of Republicans in VA want Newt or Bachmann or whoever else on the ballot, no party rule should be so onerous as to prevent that from happening. And any rule that prevents almost all of the viable national candidates from successfully jumping that signature hurdle is, on its face, adverse to that constitutional interest. This can and should be challenged by the excluded candidates as a group.

Thanks to all three of you for contributing the bulk of the very few rational posts on this and other threads concerning the Virginia primary petition fiasco.

Springfield Reformer, I think your insight, "it may be they simply didn’t have the money to buy the ground troops necessary to pull off a highly technical play like VA. " is probably the closest to the truth which will emerge in the near future.

The rules were the rules and were known to all or were discoverable by all. If candidates did not qualify under the rules it is not evidence of a conspiracy. It might be evidence of ineptness or it might be evidence that the process is so complicated and onerous that it requires time and money to fulfill which Gingrich did not have. We simply do not know.

If blame is to be accorded to Gingrich it is probably blame which should go not to events which occurred in the last few days but to events which led up to the abandonment of his campaign by his staff. The Virginia regulations require money and staff on the ground and Gingrich has been trying to compensate for an absence of both with a top-down, free media campaign. These events expose the vulnerability of trying to compensate and improvise across a continent containing 300 million people.

Nor do these events demonstrate that the "establishment" has it in for Gingrich or that the establishment GOP controlled these events. There is simply no such evidence. Whether or not the establishment GOP in Virginia is against Gingrich and for Romney cannot be concluded from these events or upon the facts as we now know them.

The fact that Gingrich is debarred from the primary election in Virginia (absent a court challenge which he should bring for a number of reasons) does not mean that Romney is destined to get the GOP nomination. Again, these events simply don't warrant that conclusion which has been repeatedly drawn on these threads. The number of delegates forfeited relative to the number needed for nomination is too trivial.

If we want to know how the Gingrich campaign is faring, we should look for reports about whether he has been able to reconstruct a staff and whether he has been able to set up state organizations. Ask whether money has been rolling into his campaign or not. These are the long-term factors which will determine the primary process leading to the nomination.

These events in Virginia are not apocalyptic, they are to a degree evidence of a shoestring campaign. The responsibility for the condition of the campaign ultimately is Gingrich's. They do not prove a lack of intelligence on Gingrich's part-as has been alleged of these threads-nor do they prove an inability to manage an organization. They might reveal an arrogance in assuming that he can run a top-down, personality oriented campaign.

But the evidence is not in.

Full disclosure: I support Gingrich.

They haven’t said he was disqualified on the technical aspect of not having 400 votes from each precinct. That standard is much easier to meet than the 10,000 valid addresses for registered voters. You could meet double that 400 standard and still not have 10,000 signatures, let alone valid ones.

One question I have is whether the campaigns have access to verify the addresses themselves. If not, then suddenly it seems like a very bad, arbitrary law that violates equal protection. They might be forced to turn in signatures without having any way of verifying whether the addresses match the ones on the voter rolls. Since voters of a higher economic status are more likely to be able to afford to move, it actually risks disenfranchising their right to get a candidate on a ballot moreso than poorer voters. Their addresses are more likely to be out-of-date.

Nevertheless there was a clear path to get on the ballot. Just get 400 signatures from each district and then 10,600 more signatures from the most friendly areas. It doesn’t matter how sloppy you got all those since they said they wouldn’t verify anything if you hit 15,000. Although I am still unclear as to whether that means they also waived verification that you had 400 from each district. If they didn’t check the addresses on Romney’s signatures, how did they verify which district those voters were in?

I do think that if Newt and Perry couldn’t muster the time or money to get the signatures, then I find it hard to believe they’ll have the resources for a court challenge, which has much less of a guarantee for a favorable outcome.

To me it makes more sense to lobby the legislature or the party to change the rule in a way that doesn’t favor any candidate or invalidate the effort of the ones who did get signatures. One way is to say, if a candidate wins any other state’s primary, they can be added to the Virginia ballot.

Happy Christmas Morning to all!

Springfield ... the qualifications that Newt and Perry failed to meet isn’t a “rule” of the RPV, it’s a law of the Commonwealth of Virginia, applicable to all D’s and R’s seeking to be on the presidential or U.S. Senate primary ballot. VA was for many years/decades, and may still be, under scrutiny of the DOJ, so one might assume the qualifying law is legit and Constitutional. (does anyone really want to challenge or modify the law when Holder is in charge?)

No one can explain how it is that in ‘08, six GOP presidential hopefuls made the primary ballot under the same requirements, in the same time frame, but suddenly on 12/24/11 the law is unconstitutional because ‘our’ guy(s) didn’t make the cut. I say that as an early Newt supporter on these site.

I’m sure Newt and his campaign team had no idea 2 months ago that he’d be in the lead now. It’s my belief that he entered the fray to frame the debate (which he’s done to a great extent), rather than win the nomination outright. But, he IS in the race, he IS now in the lead, and it IS for the Office of President of the United States. After the fact, we can’t ask that the law, or rules by which we entered the game, be changed. It’s a little too SoreLoserman for me. 11 years later we’re STILL hearing Gore won the popular vote! So what??

I ‘get’ that Newt’s campaign doesn’t have the funds and, time is short with the early primaries/caucuses being moved up. But that doesn’t explain not only my or my household’s VA voters never receiving a call or email asking to sign a petition, but CharlesWayneCT’s not even getting a response to his offer to collect signatures. That’s inexcusable.

Maybe we can not “blame” Newt or even his campaign. They fumbled the ball. That doesn’t make it the NFL’s or the ref’s error. So you pick up and go on to the next play. The primary clock is not at 00:00. It’s barely 14:59. It is not the end of the game. You might say they just had a bad end to the 1st quarter. If they want to win, they can’t sit around and spend their halftime energy on what has happened that can’t be undone. They have to look forward to what comes next. I see this as an opportunity for Newt, or Perry, or whoever the eventual nominee may be, to keep a very close eye on their ground game in all 50 states.

If the majority of Republicans in VA want Newt or Bachmann or whoever else on the ballot, no party rule should be so onerous as to prevent that from happening.

Well, let's not get dramatic about it. There's nothing stopping people from voting for Gingrich as a write-in candidate.

Murkowski actually won as a write-in candidate in AK.

And, regardless, Newt looks like a chump by blaming the system. The Virginia GOP has been talking for months about the campaigns and the signature requirements.

To be honest, I do think the RVP will somehow find a way to turn a blind eye and put the candidates on the ballot. But that doesn't mean that I think it's a good thing that Newt attacks the system.

Does anyone really believe that if Newt had made the ballot, but others hadn't, that he would have claimed the system was rigged and stupid or whatever? I don't.

Nope. He'd be out there claiming "too bad, they should have worked harder and started earlier, the process is what it is and blah blah blah . . ."