A Rebuttal to Mike Cox
by
Bill Bigler, State Committee Member
Dear State Committee Member,
After Policy Committee voted to propose a “closed” primary to State Committee as the method of selecting Michigan’s GOP Presidential nominee, Mike Cox sent out a rationale for Policy’s decision. While I applaud Mike’s effort to inform State Committee of Policy’s decision and their reasons for it, I regretfully must voice my opposition to their proposal and, further, I must take exception to Mike’s misleading characterizations concerning it.
Herein, I will only voice my objections to the proposed “closed” primary and to Mike’s comments about it. Whether a caucus or convention should replace it is something I will address in a later email.
First, I object to this primary being called “closed”. It leads people to think that only GOP can vote in the GOP Presidential “closed” primary, but that is not at all true. Any Michigan registered voter can vote in Policy’s proposed primary whether they are GOP, Dem, Ind, Lib, Green, or Communist. Now, the name is not the fault of Mike or Policy. This misnomer has unfortunately been applied to this type of primary for a very long time. Nevertheless, Mike must be held accountable for creating many false impressions in his email to State Committee.
1. Mike implies that, if we don’t have a “closed” primary, we will have “smoke-filled rooms and party bosses picking the anointed presidential nominee.” This is certainly not my impression of any county convention that I have attended nor is there anything in any of the caucus proposals that would suggest any possibility for such shenanigans.
2. Mike opens his Section 2 by saying, “Some people have told me they worry about what [Dem Chair] Mark Brewer is going to say.” Then Mike goes on to pooh-pooh what Brewer has to say. The only problem is that Mike doesn’t ever address what Brewer is saying that worries people in the GOP. Brewer is saying what I am saying. How can the GOP—the party of fiscal responsibility and limited government—justify spending ten million dollars on a government-run primary when we could have a caucus or convention at no cost to the tax payers? Brewer has already emailed his base and is chomping at the bit to start lauding the Dems for being the party to save our state 10 mil while the holier-than-thou so-called frugal GOP will be costing the tax payers 10 mil. For me, this is not an argument for us to pooh-pooh but rather to seriously consider.
3. Mike begins his Point 3 remarks by correctly saying, “In 2008, almost 900,000 people voted in the Republican primary.” Then, he takes a giant leap into Fantasy Land and says, “If the same turnout occurs in 2012, then [we] will have the names of 900,000 harder core Republican voters.” This is a whopper! While it is true that hard-core Republicans are likely to vote in the 2012 GOP Presidential primary, there is no way of knowing how many of the hypothesized 900,000 voters are Republicans—let alone “hard-core” Republicans. Once again, any Michigan registered voter can vote in Policy’s proposed primary whether they are GOP, Dem, Ind, Lib, Green, or Communist.
4. This leads to Mike’s Point 4 concerning Democratic crossover. He says, “Even though Obama was not on the Democratic ballot, there is no evidence of Democratic crossover. Mike’s puzzling query is “where is the Democratic plant” in the 2008 GOP primary? This is an odd argument at best. There is rarely if ever a “plant.” Typically, what happens in a crossover is that one party votes in the other’s primary in the hope of having a candidate chosen who best reflects their party’s values or in the hope of getting elected the candidate easiest to beat.
Mike
points
to the 2008 GOP primary results as if they jump up and down with
evidence that Dems did not influence the outcome: Romney was first;
McCain was second; Huckabee was third; Paul was fourth; Thompson was
fifth; Giuliani was sixth. However, one could
easily argue that this ranking may well reflect Dem values.
After all, Romney was Mr. Romneycare; McCain was Mr.
Amnesty and
Mr. My-good-friends-across-the-
So the 2008 primary may be inconclusive on the issue of Dem crossover but other past primaries are not. GOP politicos tell me that, in the 2000 GOP primary, the Dems made a concerted effort to embarrass John Engler by crossing over, voting for, and successfully electing McCain instead of Bush who was Engler’s favorite. Even though the Bush Campaign was well-organized and amply funded and McCain was badly organized and poorly funded, McCain won the nomination. This leads me think that McCain got a little help from his Good Friends Across the Aisle.
Of course, primary crossover is not a one-way street. I also understand that GOP crossovers were responsible for primary wins for Jesse Jackson and George Wallace as Michigan Dem Presidential nominees. Certainly, these candidates did not reflect GOP values but I’m certain that savvy crossover GOPs saw them as candidates not likely to beat their GOP opponents. If our own people are telling us that they have crossed over in sufficient numbers to sway Dem primaries, why would we not assume that Dems have done the same to us?
In 2012, when it is likely that Obama will be re-nominated without serious opposition, the Democrats will have little incentive to vote in their primary/caucus, so they will be free to cross over and vote in our primary by the hundreds of thousands.
Why do I project such a large number? I use the 2008 primary and election numbers as my basis. As you recall, Obama pulled his name from the ballot, so the state was a sure-win for Hillary Clinton. Democrats voted in the Republican primary just to manipulate the result or to register their preference. Some have admitted as much.
In a banner year for the Left, only 594,000 people voted in the Michigan Democrat Primary but 869,000 voted in the Republican primary. This is in sharp contrast to the numbers for the election itself in which Obama received 2,867,680 votes whereas McCain received only 2,044,405 votes. As you can see, almost 50% more votes were cast in the GOP primary than were cast in the Democratic primary whereas almost 50% less votes were cast in the Republican Presidential election than were cast in the Democratic one.
Consequently, I conclude that the almost 300,000 extra votes the GOP got in the primary weren’t because Republicans were so excited about voting in their primary but rather they reflect that Democrats were taking an opportunity to vote for a GOP candidate most favorable to them.
If we agree with that analysis, we must conclude that, if we have a “closed” primary, almost 300,000 Democrats will be voting in the GOP primary. They will not be voting for the GOP candidate who best reflects GOP values or has the best chance to beat Obama. On the contrary, they will be voting for the candidate who best reflects Democratic values or has the least chance of beating Obama.
4. (Again) Mike also said in his Point 4, “voters had to declare their party designation by selecting a Republican or Democratic ballot…” This wording could lead one to think that voters in the “closed” primary had to state whether or not they belong to the GOP to vote in the GOP primary. But this is not the case. As I have clarified in previous exchanges with Policy Committee, all MI registered voters have to do to vote in the proposed “closed” GOP primary is show up with Photo ID and indicate they want to vote on a GOP ballot. They don’t have to “declare” anything about their membership in any political party whatsoever.
3. (Again) This leads me back to the Wonder List. Mike, in his Point 3, said, “The list of those voters [who vote in the proposed 2012 GOP “closed” primary] will help every … Republican running for [office] all the way up to …President identify voters and potential donors.” Even if the list gave us new and accurate data, it would cost the taxpayers 10 million dollars to get it. Even if we accept Mike’s dubious assertion that we are getting 900,000 new names of voting Republicans—let’s go Mike one better and say we get one million names of voting GOP, that would mean that we would be asking MI taxpayers to pay ten dollars per name for our list.
But it’s much worse than that! Since, we already have the list from 2008, is there any way to imagine that any more than 300,000 would be new GOP? If not, we are asking MI taxpayers to pay thirty-three dollars per new name for the list! I don’t know about the proper price to pay for such lists, but one of our State Committee members, Andrew Sebolt, says that you can get names and data on GOP for three cents apiece from polling companies. If that’s true, our 300,000 newbie list has a value of only nine thousand dollars—not over nine million dollars!
Sadly, it’s even worse than that. Anyone who has used Voter Vault, which is supposed to incorporate the 2008 GOP primary list, knows that it is far from accurate (another reason to suspect Dem crossover). I know that I have tried to use Voter Vault to call people in Ann Arbor to simply get signatures for putting a GOP on the ballot for city council. I was lucky to average one commitment for every 10 calls. That is not the response of what I call “hard-core” Republicans! I am not alone. People around the state have complained about lack of good data in Voter Vault. Let’s be kind and say that half the 300,000 newbies are “hard-core” GOP. At that rate, we are now asking the MI taxpayers to cough up 66 dollars per new name for us. By my standards, that is patently ridiculous!
Here is, perhaps, the biggest problem with the list. It is an inferior way for us to find like-minded voters and donors for the next election. We should not be waiting until next spring to start finding them. We should be out finding them now. We should be following the advice of Steve Kuivenhoven, our Grassroots Vice Chair. He is exhorting us all to get out and meet our neighbors in a friendly and positive way. We should be asking them about what issues are important to them and taking our cues from their answers. This is a way to get valid lists and the way to begin the groundwork for getting our candidates elected in 2012.
5. In Mike’s Point 5, he says, “As the first big Northern swing state, we have the opportunity to attract all the top tier candidates to our state and primary.” He goes on to say that, in 2008, there were benefits that accrued to us as a result. Yet, this does not seem to me to be a matter of having a “closed” primary or a caucus or a convention. It seems to be much more a matter of when we have the event. If we see the benefit of this, we could make arrangements for candidates to speak to our electors whatever the format of our GOP Presidential nominating process.
For the above reasons, I urge you to vote NO on Policy’s “closed” primary proposal for selecting our GOP Presidential nominee for 2012. I believe it should be GOPs who select the GOP Presidential nominee. Policy’s proposal does nothing to ensure that outcome. While a primary is most inclusive, it includes far too many who should not have a say in this decision.
I would appreciate input from those of you who have ideas about a workable caucus or convention plan. I think the answer is to be found in one of those formats. At this point, I am open to either, but the Devil is in the details.
Thank you for slogging through this with me and thank you to those of you who have already given me input. I welcome your thoughts and look forward to working with you to develop a plan that allows us to say that the GOP has chosen the GOP Presidential candidate in Michigan for 2012.