Overhauling the GOP primary calendar: Will it work?
It feels like just yesterday that long nomination fights seemed cool. Not anymore, apparently. So how come the 2012 primaries didn't propel Mitt Romney to the presidency - and is there anything a national party really can do these days to control the process?
Those questions are on full view this week as the Republican National Committee unveiled ideas for strengthening their nomination process that include moving up their convention, holding fewer debates, and a shorter primary season, as reported in the party's review of the 2012 election and described by RNC chairman Reince Priebus on "Face the Nation."
Just before the 2012 cycle, you'll recall, Republicans were charting a very different path: they'd taken steps to make the primary season last longer, having scrapped their traditional winner-take-all system - win a state; get all the delegates; clinch a nomination fast - in favor of a proportional one that doled out delegates piecemeal, in an effort to keep the contest winding on through more states.
As we wrote at the time, that looked like a savvy way to replicate the Democrats' wildly successful 2008 contest, in which then-Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton fought through the spring but left behind Democratic registration boosts, organization and enthusiasm everywhere they went, even in red states, which in turn helped deliver wins in November. Moreover, by the time the 2008 conventions rolled around, it seemed so much had been said and vetted about Obama that the fall held few surprises. It all looked like evidence, in spite of conventional wisdom, that a long nomination fight could be good for a party.
2012 obviously did not turn out that way for the GOP. The allocation system did indeed slow Romney's march to the nomination: after winning the Florida primary that was thought to be his firewall, Romney and Rick Santorum battled through Ohio and Wisconsin and Michigan - all of which were fall battlegrounds, too - but none of them ultimately went for the GOP in November, nor did other early states like New Hampshire, Iowa, or Nevada. Nor, in many places, did Romney even get a substantially different number of votes than John McCain had. But whether the primaries really hurt Romney that much - or just left opportunities on the table - remains an open debate.
Part of the GOP's concern today, and desire to move up the formal nomination, is that Romney was hampered by spending laws and was "defined" during that stretch by outside groups and the Obama campaign, in much the same way other challengers to incumbents (Bob Dole in 1996, John Kerry in 2004) have also found the spring and summer, pre-convention period inhospitable.
Nationally, at least, the evidence for this in 2012 isn't that clear.
Romney had underwater favorable ratings in the CBS News Poll near the start of primary season in January 2012, 21 percent favorable to 35 percent unfavorable. From there his favorable numbers actually improved a bit overall, while his negatives didn't get much worse. It is, however, impossible to know what might have been, without that primary dynamic, or how high Romney's favorable rating might have gone otherwise.
And those ratings never did get above water - in the November exit poll he was still seen personally unfavorably by a narrow margin, even after the fall campaign. (There was an interesting discussion on the role of campaign ads, and that counterfactual, at Monkeycage
But the primary process can also reveal issues and battle test candidates in ways that can be used - or used against them - in the fall. And what really matters is whether or not the debates within the party find alignment with the wider electorate.
That isn't always a function of the calendar or the type of contest: much of Obama's 2008 nomination success came via the caucuses, which tend to draw more liberal-leaning activists, and was spurred at least early on by the Iraq war issue. By the time fall rolled around, that paid off when two-thirds of voters disapproved of the war, and Obama captured the bulk of them.
- 10 years later: The Iraq war's lasting impact on U.S. politics
- Poll: Majority thinks U.S. should have stayed out of Iraq
In 2012's primaries, the image - deserved or undeserved - of Romney as favoring the rich was already rising. Both Newt Gingrich's allies and the Obama campaign used the Bain timeline against Romney. Through the spring, the vote patterns by income were signaled this was an issue Romney's campaign had to address: Romney consistently lost to either Santorum, Gingrich or Ron Paul in state after state, among primary voters earning under $50,000. In the end, all Republicans - at least, the ones who voted - came back to Romney, but those early patterns hinted at the electoral impact of an image issue that would haunt him in November in the wider electorate. They can be seen as a negative image hammered home in a too-long primary fight, or, as a signal presented and missed.
Remember, too, that if the party's goal is to get a candidate with appeal beyond the base, many voters are happy to think in those terms too. Voters seem increasingly comfortable playing political consultants, and for better or worse, primary voters are not always looking for the most ideologically pure choice. Romney was consistently seen by primary voters as most "electable," a tag that helped him get by some of the hesitancy shown by more staunch conservatives. (Note that just because he lost doesn't mean that was an incorrect calculus; he was surely the best-funded, and no one knows for sure if anyone else in the field would've gotten closer.)
On the matter of funding, one of the largest push backs against a shortened or larger geographic primary season will be the rising influence of money. That's already raised concern among some readers of the GOP report. In larger regions, or larger states, or a shorter season, campaigns will be focused more on advertising and organization than the door to door, retail politics we often see in places like New Hampshire and Iowa.
At the same time, it was often said in 2011 and 2012 that Romney's money advantages would serve him especially well in a long primary season, too; that he could afford to wage a war of attrition if it came to that. And it did. So, diminishing the role of money in favor of grassroots, if that is a goal, might not be that easily done through the calendar, either. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, the primaries are going through large media markets.
By the way, this is a place where the RNC report indicates the party will try to spend money wisely - on the ground. While much was made of the Republican money advantage in 2012, most of the money spent by the Obama campaign was on the ground whereas most of the Romney and GOP money was spent on the air. The RNC report aims directly to change that - putting an enormous focus, immediately, on voter contacts and outreach.
Part of what makes these national party calculations so fascinating is that they have such a storied history. Since the early 1970s, when the McGovern-Frasier reforms looked to give more control over presidential nominees to the voters and take it out of the "smoke-filled rooms" of the party bosses, the rise of primaries and caucuses has touched off a sometimes-uneasy relationship between the voters and the party leaders. Those added caucuses and primaries too often were derided for producing too-liberal nominees on the Democrats' side.
In the 1980s and 1990s Super Tuesday grew out of a desire to give regional blocks (and southern states) more clout in picking a moderate nominee, but the momentum of the early contests still seemed to hold sway. And throughout recent cycles states have leapfrogged over each other in an effort to be the momentum-generating, critical contest.
Adding to all this now, though - and the uncertainty any national party faces - is the great unknown of super PAC influence. While the RNC report tries to reinvigorate the role of the party in the primary and election process - something that has notably been on the decline in recent years - the ability of outside groups, aligned with or, at least, backing specific candidates, can supersede the traditional campaign finance structure.
Priebus alluded to moving the convention up to avoid another case of its nominee being "a sitting duck" - being targeted from the outside, unable to spend his general election funds until after the convention. But outside spending and super PACs could change that equation as well. With Republicans out of the White House for going on eight years - there will be plenty of money and plenty of desire to take down each other and whomever emerges from the Democratic side - so the role of super PACs could be a factor that throws the entire party playbook out the window.
When applying lessons, another important difference between 2016 and 2012, of course, is that the Republicans won't be the only show in town in 2016. Romney's battle came with all eyes on it while Obama focused on the general election. Priebus and the RNC may have wished to have a reduced schedule in 2012 when their front-runner and eventual nominee Romney was battling candidates who didn't turn out to have staying power, such as Herman Cain, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann, for most of the fall. But they'll have to compete for attention with the Democrats in 2016, who'll have a wide-open process of their own, and perhaps a headline-grabber or two of their own if Hillary Clinton or other notables decide to run.
A more diverse Republican field with Chris Christie or Jeb Bush, if they run, competing for the moderate side of the party against a Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan or Rand Paul would surely grab headlines. It might also offer a great chance for the eventual nominee to show and prove why his (or her) brand of brand of Republicanism is most appealing.
Where the show goes, though, is far harder to steer. National parties - Democrats and Republicans - frankly haven't had much success preventing states from acting as they see fit in their nominating processes, or their selection of primary days, or most of all, from doing anything but adhering to the will of their voters and the campaigns that chart their own courses. In fact, the RNC itself had huge issues getting states to line up in their primaries going into 2012 and there was a threat that New Hampshire would be forced to hold its primary in 2011 - so there is no clear way that a party can really control that process, and even then the threat of delegates lost doesn't always win the battle over attention from the candidates and the media. (For political junkies, though, a campaign with an early convention would be a really fun experiment to watch.)
National parties want both a winner and worthy champion. But like tournament organizers who can't dictate what teams get in, or even where the early rounds are played, they exert only limited control over the system.
And a final note: In February 2012, after Florida and as the Republican primaries were still rolling along, the CBS News/New York Times poll asked voters if the issues Republicans were debating were topics mattered to everyone, or seemed to be only of concern to Republicans. 58 percent felt the Republicans were only talking to Republicans. Critically, two-thirds of independents agreed.
All of which suggests - and as party leaders would doubtless agree - that how long a party's nomination process goes, or which states it goes through, probably matters less than what it's talking about.
