Conservatives hate democracy so much they’re disenfranchising white Republicans now
by digby
The right wing credo: when you can’t win by playing by the rules, change the rules.
The Georgia Republican Party will vote Saturday on whether to nominate its candidates at a convention rather than by regular primaries, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Georgia Republicans are weighing an election shift that could reshape the state’s political landscape by giving grass-roots activists tremendous new clout in picking the party’s nominee.
State GOP leaders plan to vote Saturday on whether to take a first step away from the summer primaries that elect the party’s nominee and toward allowing a convention of party insiders to choose the candidate for statewide and national office. Consider it an audition for a more sweeping electoral change.
Not surprisingly, some elected Republican leaders and assorted power brokers are wary of an overhaul they fear could disenfranchise the roughly 700,000 people who vote in party primaries and cede power to a smaller group of activists.
But supporters say the change is needed to offset what the resolution calls the “power of Big Money and Big Media” and give more say to the activists who feel they’ve been ignored during the GOP’s ascendancy.
The resolution being voted on Saturday doesn’t actually make the change, but rather calls for a closer examination of it. Switching the nomination process would require a change to state law.
Only a select few states employ this method. In Utah, primaries are only held if no candidate reaches 60 percent of the vote at the state party convention. In Virginia, the state party decides each year whether to nominate its candidates via primaries or convention.The reason it matters: Conventions are often dominated by conservative party activists and tend to favor more conservative candidates.
First let’s just think about how conservative you have to be to believe that the Georgia GOP isn’t conservative enough. I think I’ll call this the Paula Deen faction.
They sure don’t like letting people vote.Of course, this time they’re trying to disenfranchise a bunch of white Republicans. Might they have gone too far this time?