Posted on 03/30/2016 11:02:50 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
For the first time in a very long time, the very late June primary in California will actually matter.
Moreover, thanks to the history of the California Republican Party, only Republicans can participate in the primary process in the nation’s largest state, and California has a winner-take-all-by-district system that may allow Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to mount a comeback against frontrunner Donald Trump.
In 1998, Michael Schroeder was Chair of the State GOP. Schroeder was instrumental, as a member of the RNC’s Rules Committee, in securing language that was adopted into the official Rules of the party:
Any state Republican Party may set the date for any primary, caucus, convention or meeting for the purpose of voting for a presidential candidate and/or electing, selecting, allocating or binding delegates to the national convention. … To the extent a state Republican Party’s rules are in conflict with its state laws with respect to this rule, the provisions of this rule and the state Republican Party’s rules shall control.
Schroeder also successfully led an effort to amend the California GOP rules to make it clear that only Republicans can vote in the primary.
Today Schroeder is serving as the volunteer Political Director of the Ted Cruz campaign in California, where it could turn out that his handiwork of nearly 18 years ago may mean everything....
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
What rules? The GOP makes them up as they go.
Trump campaign combines the best of Rohrabacher, Duncan Hunter, Arnold and Pete Wilson.
Trump won Nevada and Arizona.
Ha, ha, ha, you can’t believe how many people here in CA. have changed their registration!!!
There was a guest on He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named’s talk show today who said that the Libertarian Party was qualified in IIRC 48 States, and that if Donald J. Trump is denied the Republican Nomination, he might be able to convince the Libertarians that they could actually win one for a change.
We really could be looking at the Republicans going the way of the Whigs. ;-) The Democrats are sort of like the poor: they will always be with us.
I’m sure you know all forty million residents.
On the other hand, the demoncraps commands come from on high so they do exactly what you are thinking the Republicans do.
The one thing that frustrated the GOPe more is the fact that they have to contend with grunt conservatives like me.
I am more of a libertarian conservative and support Trump. However, the Libertarian Party itself is so whacked out and purist I seriously doubt that they would accept a populist like Trump.
He would be best for a Constitution Party- but I don’t know the status of their ballot access.
Are you saying Trump could run as a libertarian ????
There are articles in our local papers all the time about voter registration switches!!! You are being sarcastic for no reason I live here I know what the hell is going here!!! They are NOT switching to vote Cruz!!!!
Cruz gets no negative Hispanic press - he’s the Hispanic guy and Trump is the big-bad gringo who ‘hates’ them.
Time to change things up and hold Cruz to his stated immigration platform, as opposed to Trump’s platform, in a state where it will resonate
Florida was also a closed primary. That didn’t work out so well for Cruz. What the district by district WTA rule in CA means is that if any candidate gets a simple plurality within that district, he gets ALL the delegates for it. So if Trump wins by even a single vote within a district, Cruz gets nothing there.
There will undoubtedly be some districts Cruz will win and he will get all the delegates for that district, but I’m not sure how that equates to some sort of automatic advantage for Cruz. Unless you were afraid he’d win zero delegates here ?
Unless you work for the Trump campaign already there’s little chance of that happening. People have a visceral reaction to a name on a ballot and when they see “Cruz” which is a pretty common surname, they will probably mark it.
What California Republican Senator will also be on the ballot like Rubio was in Florida?
The Libertarian National Convention is May 27-29 2016, so Trump would have to make a deal after their convention, unless they just went ahead and nominated him for President. Stranger things have happened this year so far, and it isn’t even half over.
Fortunately for us in CA. primary is closed, Latinos are mostly registered DEM they are not switching over probably don’t even know they would have to, so marking Cruz in the primary won’t happen!!! There are ALOT of switch overs but I guarantee you they ARE NOT Hispanics!!!!
In a majority Hispanic state you’re assuring me that no Hispanics will be voting for Cruz?
You are not counting on Trump running as a Libertarian are you? Because many states have “sore loser” laws. Which means it’s not legally possible to get on the ballot in many states if a candidate loses a party nomination but was a candidate in the primary. If the Republican race goes to the convention, all the states will have had primaries or caucuses. Whoever does not get the nomination will be barred from being on the ballot in most states.
Look, you can get angry all you want, but the Party rules have been in effect for almost 160 years. If you want to get angry at anyone, get angry at our public education system that did a miserable job in educating you on the way our political system works. Remember, we live under a Representative Democracy, not a pure Democracy.
That being said, it takes a majority vote of the delegates to win the nomination. If no candidate has a majority of delegates locked up prior to the convention, there could be a contested convention. It’s no different than some states that have laws that state a candidate must win 50% + 1 vote to win either a primary or general election. If no candidate gets the magic 50% +1, then there will be a runoff election between the two top candidates to decide who will be the winner.
If you live in Texas, not only can someone who participated as a candidate for office in a primary not appear as an independent candidate or candidate of any other party, but anyone who voted in a partisan primary is not allowed to sign a petition to get an independent candidate on the general election ballot. An independent has just a few weeks to apply as an independent candidate for an office, but must get the required number of signatures from registered voters who did not vote in a partisan primary in that election cycle.
Many will try to argue that Ross Perot ran as an Independent, but Perot never ran in any primaries, he was an Independent the whole time, and thus was eligible to get put on every state ballot via petitions. Had Perot tried to do what Trump is doing, then Perot would never have been able to be a 3rd party candidate either, and George H Bush would have defeated Bill Clinton in 1992.
So the threat that Trump or Cruz will run as an Independent if they lose at a brokered convention is just that, an empty threat.
Now the scary thing about this is, the GOPe has lot more sway in controlling who the candidate will be than most realize. Unless Ted Cruz or Donald Trump can win the number of delegates needed before the convention, or convince enough delegates to switch and vote for them on the second ballot, the GOPe will be deciding who will represent the Republican party come November.
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