Curly Haugland: Will Republicans Have a Primary Or A Convention, And Who Gets To Decide?

Say Anything Blog ^ | August 1st 2015 | Curly Haugland

[trebb]

I noticed that Trump’s delegates have gone up by 9 in the last day. Perhaps some of the “persuaded” delegates have opted to do the right thing.

[SamuraiScot]

"The Party members have superior knowledge of the Issues, and therefore have the right to guide the Masses into Correct Thought".

The point of respecting local party organizations is the opposite of what you suggest. The Founders thought and argued these matters over the decades before 1776. They were students of history and of politics, ranging from Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas to Machiavelli and beyond. In their writings, again and again you will find them building in layers of subsidiarity--keeping decision-making at the lowest level possible, rather than with an elite at the top.

One of the Founders' conclusions was that democracy--that is, a popular vote of all deciding things that will affect everyone down to the last individual--leads most quickly to tyranny. An elite always forms to administer these vast decisions, as everyone else forgets about them after election day and goes back to everyday life.

The Founders' solution, which is found throughout the Constitution, was to let local men vote on local matters affecting them personally, with the Federal government specifically excluded (all other matters being left to "the States or the People, repectively"). That way, if men were stepping on each other's toes, the matter would be fought out and dealt with urgently. This is rather than having, say, a popular referendum of the whole state deciding whether cattle can graze on a town common. It might work fine in some places, but not others--so why try to make one size fit all?

The Founders had local representatives elect higher-level officials such as U.S. Senators and Presidential electors. For instance, state legislators elected U.S. Senators. This meant that if your local legislator was voting the wrong way for Senator as far as the interests of you and your neighbors were concerned, he had to answer to you. But after the 17th Amendment (1913), residents of New York City could decide in overwhelming numbers how farmers outside of Utica, NY, ought to live. As Judge Jay Bybee points out in Ulysses at the Mast: Democracy, Federalism, and the Sirens' Song of the Seventeenth Amendment, "the election of senators by the states reassured Anti-federalists that there would be some protection against the swallowing up of states and their powers by the federal government."

That's why repealing the 17th Amendment has been a Tea Party issue, and why local party organization, though imperfect, is as well. Local party orgs are too ornery and various to be controlled by GOPe muckimucks in Washington.

Having things set up (by the party muckimucks) so your guy can sweep in by popular acclamation overnight in as big a democratic vote as possible sounds great. But it's not so fun when the enemies of the country do the same thing 8 years later.

It's right that candidates have to organize in 50 states and win on their own. It's our protection against the GOPe and 0bamanauts, whom you always have with you.