Give me a f%^&*ing break.
Posted on 04/22/2016 2:13:18 PM PDT by Kaslin
One of the biggest stories of the last couple weeks was Ted Cruz's complete shutout of Donald Trump in the Colorado delegate selection at the Colorado state Republican convention. The story, pushed hard by Trump and his zombie followers, is that the election was "stolen" by Cruz in an "unfair process."
Okay, fine, sour grapes and all. But on Sunday I watched Media Buzz with Howard Kurtz, and realized that real story is this: the media has not, and apparently will not, do the tiniest bit of research in order to get the grossest, most basic facts about this correct.
"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." -- Mark Twain
There are a bunch of myths that everyone on the show repeated as fact. It started with Kurtz himself talking about the "convoluted process" Colorado uses. Ahem:
Myth #1: "The process is convoluted"
Well, here's the process: there is a caucus, in which any registered Republican may participate, to vote on delegates or to run as a delegate. These delegates go to the county and district caucuses, where some of them are selected by vote to go on as state delegates at the Colorado state convention, where delegates to the national convention are selected. By vote.
Here's where Heidi Przybyla on Media Buzz confidently asserted ...
Myth #2: "The process is 'voteless'"
Colorado's process is hardly "voteless." We've got votes coming out of our ears. Tens of thousands of people voted -- I've seen 65,000 reported, I've seen 70,000. No, they're not "party insiders." I mean, 70,000 "party insiders" in one state? Come on.
In fact, the process is as exclusive as a thunderstorm -- as evidenced by the fact I was elected a state delegate in 1976. Here's the deal: if you want to have your vote count in the delegate selection process, you have to go to the freaking election. In Colorado this year, the election was on March 1.
These two articles helped pushed the nonsense "voterless" narrative that Colorado had neither primaries nor caucuses, providing the opposite service to readers than one might expect by making this easy stuff hard to understand.
Myth #3: "The process is hard to understand"
Kurtz pushed this one, too.
Folks: I just laid the process out without using any big words beyond "convention" and "delegate." What I wrote above is simply a paraphrase of the way it was explained to me by the Republican county chairman in Pueblo County when I was elected to be a delegate to the state convention.
Forty years ago.
At age 19.
I really don't know what to make of this. It wasn't hard to understand then. And since then, nothing remotely significant about the process was changed.
Myth #4: "The process was changed to damage Trump"
Heidi Przybyla hit on this one a little later in the discussion. Again, it's what you know that ain't so that hurts.
The last time the delegate-selection process was changed was in 2002, when we went back to the process we'd used since 1912 after a short experiment with primaries. What changed in 2015 was that we decided to no longer have our traditional non-binding straw poll.
Why? Because the Republican National Committee said if we had a straw poll, it had to be binding.
So we had a non-binding straw poll in the past. Now we don't. Otherwise, the process is essentially identical to what it was when I was elected a delegate to the state convention. Forty years ago.
In fact, the process was established in 1912.
The foresight of the state GOP to establish a process to cheat Trump 104 years before this caucus was amazing.
Myth #5: "A Trump delegate was removed"
On Saturday, April 9, 2016, a man named Larry from Douglas County, CO slandered Douglas County (CO) Republicans on Facebook. In that Facebook post, Larry claimed that he went to his neighborhood caucus meeting on March 1st, at which a precinct captain named Jan Morgan had threatened him about being a Trump supporter, with the implication that Trump supporters would not be allowed to be delegates to the April 9th State Republican Assembly.
The problem? It apparently didn't happen.
Larry didn't show up for the district convention where he would have been eligible to be elected to be a delegate to the state convention -- or at least he didn't check in and didn't sit with the other delegates.
"Jan Morgan" doesn't exist, at least as a precinct captain in Douglas County (of course there is a Jan Morgan who is a fairly popular political personality, but she's not from Colorado).
--------------------
Five myths isn't a bad score when you realize that it was only part of a four-minute segment. If you want more details, I'll recommend to you Ari Armstrong's account. Ari was a delegate to the state convention this year. Follow that link and then follow some of Ari's links, and you'll be able to get up to date on the facts of the matter.
Which is exactly what almost no one in the media bothers to do. Instead, they repeat the prevarications, misleading assertions, and outright lies (viz., Drudge's "no primaries or caucuses" headline) coming out of the Trump campaign. Kurtz had a chance there to have the Fox "brain room" spend ten minutes Googling the facts, and didn't.
That's the real story.
When the author said “dopey followers” I quit reading
Heh. What makes you think this was aimed at you?
I don’t care if they’ve been doing it this way for a thousand years, it’s still a crap process.
They can defend it all they like, in fact I hope they double-down on defending it because it just proves Trump’s point that the system is rigged and run by insiders (like the insider who wrote this).
The Colorado Steal pretty much assured Trump the nomination and showed Lyin’ Ted to be the insider politician that he is.
How likely is it that the process as described will reflect the will of the voters? (In this case, Republican)
The answer, as illustrated by the Colorado results: not at all. The power of insiders to exert their will on the end result by definition comes at the expense of the voter.
Give me a f%^&*ing break.
The “system is rigged meme” has the advantage of being demonstrably true.
As the article said (my bold below), "Colorado's process is hardly "voteless." We've got votes coming out of our ears. Tens of thousands of people voted -- I've seen 65,000 reported, I've seen 70,000. No, they're not "party insiders." I mean, 70,000 "party insiders" in one state? Come on."
Have you ever been selected as a delegate to a state Republican convention? I have, and I'm no party activist or official. We elected a college student to be our district's delegate to the Republican National Convention. He wasn't any kind of party official or insider. There is a lot of voting at the local, county, and state meetings/caucuses/conventions and lots of discussions and voting on platform and party issues.
If you really want to make a difference in your party, go to those meetings. Better yet, organize a group that thinks the same way you do, and go make your voices heard. Or you can sit home, and, having chosen not to make the effort, you can grouse and complain about the results and how unfair and rigged they were.
You can rationalize all you want, but this is the result that the people of Colorado gave when asked whom they preferred.
TRUMP CARD: Magellan Poll Finds That Trump Would Trump Cruz in a Primary
Colorado Peak Politics -Conservative Bully Pulpit ^ | April 21, 2016 | Colorado Peak Politics
Posted on 4/22/2016, 6:49:24 AM by Beautiful_Gracious_Skies
There has been a lot of agitation from the Trump Camp about the caucus process in Colorado – and, maybe, now we know why. A Magellan poll released today shows that in a head to head match up, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump would beat his opponent Ted Cruz in Colorado.
Here are the numbers when voting on the current ballot:
44% – Trump
34% – Cruz
17% – Kasich
5% – undecided
If voters were asked to choose between Cruz and Trump, the result is little changed:
48% – Trump
42% – Cruz According to the poll, Trump’s top spot is due to his strong stance on immigration and national security. From the poll summary:
“Simply put, support for Donald Trump is being driven by his dominance among the 22% of voters that believe stopping illegal immigration is the the top issue.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3423563/posts
Yeah, yeah, rules is rules, but getting those delegates the way he did crushed Cruz in the opinion polls and he won’t recover from that.
I see three "votes" in that process and the fourth would be what they do at the national convention. Only one of those four votes directly reflects the will of the people.
Magellan LA 3/1/2016:
Trump 41
Cruz 21
Actual Louisiana primary votes 3/4/2016:
Trump 41
Cruz 38
Here's how Magellan polling did in Mississippi on 2/29/2016:
Trump 41
Cruz 17
Actual Mississippi primary votes 3/8/2016:
Trump 47
Cruz 36
So, on those two primaries Magellan underestimated Trump on average by 7% and Cruz by 95% . Somehow they are not doing very well in determining Cruz's support.
Inaccurate as their polling may be, it doesn’t equate to 34-0.
Nor do rules that gave Trump all 99 delegates in Florida although the majority of primary voters voted against him.
As you said, rules are rules, right?
Whose fault is it that Trump didn't get his people to the Colorado meetings where thousands of people were involved in the process of selecting delegates to the national convention? Apparently, it is the same process that Colorado has been using since 1912.
In 2012, Santorum won the Colorado straw poll, but suspended his campaign right before the Colorado State Convention. Second place finisher Romney then ended up most of the Colorado delegates at the national conventions although apparently 8 Colorado delegates (Santorum and Paul delegates) did not vote at the national convention (their guys might not have been nominated on the floor).
Exactly!
Only a crooked lawyer could love the convoluted way the delegates somehow all ended up being bound to Cruz in CO.
And even that vote does not reflect the will of the people, since they did not know which candidate any of the delegates would support.
Furthermore, according to the rules the CO GOP set up in August, the delegates were supposed to remain unbound until the national convention, so that they would be free to vote their choice then.
In any case, what happened in CO stank. The GOP in CO realizes that--I saw an article where CO is now talking about going to a primary process from now on.
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