Utah Republican Party officials, including the state chair, say they are thinking of setting up procedures to interview individuals who want to appear on Republican primary ballots. See this story.
Utah Republican Party officials, including the state chair, say they are thinking of setting up procedures to interview individuals who want to appear on Republican primary ballots. See this story.
This should be obvious. Not only to the Republicans and Democrats not want outside opposition from “third parties” and independents, they also wish to squelch dissidents within their own ranks. The cry is “no more RINO’s,” “no more LaRouchers.” They fail to recognize their risk – even as they screen out opponents, one day someone will screen them out!
I have mixed thoughts on this concept. I know a political party is supposed to be organized around a philosophy or – like the Prohibition Party – organized around a central issue. But when a party gets to a point where a candidate must cross his ‘t’s” or dot his “i’s” just exactly like the bosses of the party demand, then you have more of a totalitarian political action group than you do a political party.
If the GOP – or any party starts this “vetting purity” for the lack of a better term, the party is eventually going to become so narrow in its views that it turns off everyone. From what I’ve read of the current Constitution[al] Party, they are operating from a vetting purity. And this is one reason why the party is not growing and will not grow.
The purpose of the Party Primary is so that the members of the party – not the bosses – are the ones who decides who will carry the banner in the General Election.
This is one of the reasons why the Democratic Party dominated the South from after Reconstruction until after the 1950’s. True, most Democrats of that era were Segregationist, but this was the only “vetting” that the voters did in the Primary. Aside from this one issue, Democratic candidates were free to speak on other issues and move toward reforms that their fellow Democrats were demanding. It worked. Once the Democrats did their internal fighting within the Primary, they came together and usually won whatever office they were seeking with 80 to 90 percent of the vote. The GOP in Utah – and other parties need to study the history of the Democratic Party in the South before they engage on this suicidal concept of “vetting.”
I don’t get this. How can they participate in both a convention AND the taxpayer funded primary? It should be either or. The solution here is obvious – abolish the primary elections, except those for non-partisan offices like judges and school board. It is none of the state’s business how the party bosses run their party. If voters don’t like the way their party is run, they can leave it, or get involved ti reform it.
This is BOSS TYRANT stuff from the BAD OLD Days before official primary elections came along in the late 1880s (repeat 1880s).
Will it take another Grant/Sherman Union Army to liberate Utah from its GANGSTER monarchs/oligarchs ???