Dave_LF wrote:And none of that information (all covered in the article I linked to, incidentally) changes the fact that 20,000 Republicans felt that Mr. Nazi was a better choice than a Democrat, a third party candidate, or staying home. In the absolute best case, because they just blindly checked the "R" box. I suppose if one were inclined toward optimism (and I am not, at this juncture), one could argue that in a more competitive election, his Nazism would have been better publicized and might have discouraged, say, half of those 20,000 from voting for him.
It's the dead cat principle, sometimes called the hat rack principle. The way it works is, there are people who would vote for a dead cat as long as it belonged to the right party. There are people who don't bother to know anything about the candidate, just whether a D or R follows the name. Just look at the case of Alvin Greene. Everyone who knew anything about him knew he was a highly defective candidate, and yet he still pulled in 30% of the vote.
Do you suspect that the 20,000 actually knew much about this down-ticket primary candidate?
RoseMorninStar wrote:I am puzzled as to why a party cannot vet/approve/reject candidates to ensure that the objective of a candidate is true to their party ideals/ideas. It isn't as if it would prevent the person from running for office, just not under the 'banner' of a particular party.
RoseMorninStar wrote:One would think the National elections would have an interest in maintaining the integrity *cough* of their 'brand'. Oh.. integrity.. that's the missing element. There seems to be very little of it in politics.
Actually they don't have near as much say in the matter as one might think.
After BCRA was passed, a strict division between national and state parties was instituted. Technically they are completely separate entities, but affiliated with each other. I got in trouble over this as a county party official, when I prepared some membership forms that had both state and national on the same form and was informed that was absolutely not allowed.
The only real power the national party has over the state parties comes in the extreme and unusual circumstance of when the state party splits due to internal feuding, and the national party has to choose which one of the two state parties to recognize. This relates to any funding the state party gets from the government and also the ballot line, which although that is determined by state election officials, they are very happy if the national party makes the decision for them. They know that whatever they decide, the other faction will accuse them of political manipulation, so if they let someone else decide it saves them from trouble. Who will the Democrats of your state blame if the national Democratic Party makes the decision and your state's Secretary of State simply goes along with it?
There is also no vetting of who registers with the party. That is simply included on voter registration forms issued by the state and includes all recognized parties. That can hurt 3rd parties that are always fighting to maintain status, but since the two parties have written the rules to include themselves and exclude everyone else that means anyone of any belief can sign up to register to vote for one of the two parties. A few years ago I registered Democrat to annoy a very statist Democrat I know since by doing so I was "polluting" his party. Moreover, anyone can sign up to run for public office under any party banner, and the only redress the party has to undo that is to run someone against that person. Since this district was completely ignored until it was too late, it was therefore too late to do that redress. Once they have an insider running against the outsider, they can lavish that insider with money, airtime, support, voter information lists, donor information lists, endorsements, etc. Imagine having the governor and a senator come to your city council race to enforce one of the local candidates. Imagine having them tell all the party members across the state that they should donate to that city council candidate. Powerful stuff, but the one thing they can't do is say "that person cannot use our party name" if that person is validly registered to vote for that party.
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
-- Samuel Adams
