A brokered convention hasn't been seen in American politics for decades. The last time there was one was in 1976, when Ronald Reagan battled President Gerald Ford all the way to the Republican National Convention in Kansas City, where the Gipper was gigged out of the GOP nomination, setting off an intra-party schism that handed the '76 election to Jimmy Carter. Originally, every convention was brokered, with both parties' nominees determined not by primary voters and caucus-goers but by party bosses in smoke-filled rooms behind closed doors.
This is something that I would think the contemporary Republican grassroots would want to avoid like the plague, would find outrageous and repulsive, since it would play right into the hands of the hated "establishment". I've argued for years that if Tea Partiers want to avoid such a disastrous outcome, they need to unify behind the most electable conservative candidate and make the nomination contest a head-to-head fight with the "establishment's" favorite - which, in 2016 would mean Scott Walker taking on (and defeating) Jeb Bush. But each and every time the conservative grassroots scatter themselves to the four winds among multiple "hopefuls" almost all of whom are not qualified and have no chance of winning, which always leaves the "establishment" candidate free and clear to cruise to the nomination, and inevitable crushing defeat the following November. The current ridiculously overcrowded GOP field not only all but guarantees that outcome but also the brokered convention that all TPers should fear.
But leave it to the media to completely ignore that angle and go off on an anti-Citizens United tangent:
Concerns are mounting that Citizens United, the ruling that opened the floodgates to unlimited spending in campaigns, could distort the presidential race by giving a lifeline to second- and third-tier candidates at the expense of front-runners.
The First Amendment is distorting the presidential race? The hell you say!
According to Politico, the ruling is expected to make the 2016 primary longer, more expensive, and potentially more divisive as more candidates continue to duke it out, potentially hurting the Republican Party's chances of retaking the White House.
I'd say it's all but guaranteed.
"A super PAC for a broadly successful candidate makes them doubly formidable. A super PAC for a marginal candidate keeps them alive. And that's what's different now," former President George W. Bush's press secretary Ari Fleischer told Politico.
To date, roughly $86 million has been raised by big-money groups to support candidates who aren't ranking on top of the polls, such as Governors Chris Christie of New Jersey and John Kasich of Ohio, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, and former Governors Rick Perry of Texas and Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, Politico said.
I'll say it again: We have too many damned candidates. But we also have the First Amendment, which protects political speech above all, and that's what the Citizens United decision reinstated. Which is another way of saying that money will never be "gotten out of politics," but the First Amendment guarantees that all candidates have fair access to it if they can attract support and funding. Or, put still another way, the First Amendment should not be gutted to save the Stupid Party from its own foolishness.
One more quote:
"No one is going to be able to raise as much as Jeb Bush, but what we have is going to help Governor Perry compete. Competition is a good thing. The more people in the process, the better," said Jordan Russell, a spokesman for a trio of pro-Perry super PACs that have collectively raised nearly $17 million.
No, Mr. Russell, the more people in the process, the worse. But what else is a backer of an also-ran candidate going to say? If Governor Perry were the frontrunner, I guarantee Mr. Russell would be singing a different tune.
At some point you'd think that we could all step back and look at the big picture of maximizing our chances of taking back the White House next year instead of fragmenting and dividing ourselves in a long, bitter intra-party scrum guaranteed to leave myopic hurt feelings - precisely as happened forty years ago in the Ford-Reagan debacle. But apparently we really are, Tea Partiers and "establishment" alike, the Stupid Party.
But if all our candidates are going to spend buttloads of money ripping the party apart, they've got the First Amendment right to do so.
One that a President Rodham will take away with the stroke of Barack Obama's pen. A specter to which we'll only awaken after it's too late.
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