The good, the bad and the caucus

At long last, the Nevada Republican caucuses are officially over. Not soon forgotten, it is my hope that the Nevada voters and the Republican Party will process the events that transpired and take from this experience the hard lessons and learn from them.

The presidential nominating process, however imperfect, matters. If the process is simply a formality to nominate the person most likely to win in the general election, then call the whole thing for Romney. Santorum, Gingrich and Paul need to take their marbles and go home. If this were only about picking winners, then the parties could just go back to the way they used to do it, and appoint nominees with no say from the voters at all. Thankfully, the process is about more than that. All the candidates, not just the front-runner, help to build the party and shape the platform on a local and national level. Many of the upcoming contests on the Republican side are proportional in the way they assign delegates, and this will allow the more conservative Gingrich—if he continues to compete—to still have significant representation at the national convention. When the Gingrich delegates get to Florida to participate in the convention, these more conservative delegates will do much to influence what Romney’s party and platform end up saying.

I have never been a fan of Gingrich or his crotchety, grumpy demeanor and unwillingness to talk about anything he doesn’t want to, but I do agree with him on one thing—the media has no business anointing candidates. This race will be over when the voters say it’s over, not when the media says so.

You can’t please all the people all the time. A special evening caucus for religious voters who observe a Saturday Sabbath may have seemed like a good idea, but in the end, it was not. The caucus held at the Adelson Educational Campus in Summerlin was poorly managed, the rules were vague, and the Ron Paul campaign, always willing to disregard the rules to gain undeserved influence, swarmed the building with supporters causing long lines, angry confrontations and cries of voter disenfranchisement.

The Paul campaign sent out a series of robo-calls to their supporters notifying them that the evening caucus was a second chance to participate for those who missed the morning caucus, conveniently forgetting the fact that this session was for those voters who observe the Sabbath.

In the end, I applaud the Republicans’ attempt to be inclusive, but there are simpler, easier solutions, like holding the whole thing on a Tuesday evening.

The dismal turnout speaks volumes. Nevada Republicans will be debating for years to come if the abysmally low turnout was a result of poor organization, the moronic rules that prohibited many voters from participating even if they wanted to or the fact that the candidates ignored us because we gave away our influence in the process. Maybe Nevada voters don’t like the caucus process?

Regardless of the reason, something has to be done. The Republicans are already talking about a presidential primary system, which would take the process out of the hands of the parties and return it to the grownups in the Secretary of State’s office, but in a time when we don’t have the money to fully fund basic services, I don’t imagine any legislation calling for $1.5 million for a presidential primary will ever make it anywhere past Republican fantasyland.

Nevada Republicans have spoken. The caucuses are over, thank god. Now comes the regular primary and general elections. Can we at least get these two right, please?