I may not always agree with Newt Gingrich, but every so often, he nails it. And I found myself thinking “right on” as I read his take on efforts by the Republican National Committee to grab control over the presidential nominating process in 2016.
“There’s a wing of the Republican Party which would like life to be orderly and dominated by the rich,” Gingrich told Politico in a story on the 2016 nominating contest. “And so they would like to take all of the things that make politics exciting and responding to the popular will and they would like to hide from it. The fact is, if you can’t nominate somebody who can win debates and come out of the contest stronger, they wouldn’t have a chance to beat Hillary in the general.”
The RNC has taken steps to shrink the primary calendar and to hold fewer debates in 2016, which is a response to the mistaken belief that the protracted 2012 primary cost Mitt Romney the presidency. Blaming the nominating process is just an easy explanation for Romney’s defeat, which was the result of myriad factors. There is no historically supported argument to back up the RNC narrative that a shorter process, with fewer debates and an earlier convention, would be better.
In 2008, the Democratic primaries went until June, and Barack Obama had over 20 debates during his brutal battle with Hillary Clinton. When he won the presidency in November, the prevailing view became that the long primary actually helped him, sharpening his debating skills going into the fall, and allowing potentially damaging news (such as his relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright) to come out when it would do the least harm — during the period when he was too far ahead on delegates to lose the Democratic nomination, but before the general election started.
The RNC has also decided to make its 2016 convention earlier — as early as June — so the nominee can begin to spend general election funds earlier than in 2012, when the convention took place in late August. But again, there is no reason to think this will improve matters. In 2004, John Kerry effectively clinched the Democratic nomination in early March, when his main rival, John Edwards, dropped out. The Democratic National Convention that nominated Kerry was held in July, while the GOP convention that year extended into September. After Kerry lost, the popular conclusion was that the early convention hurt Kerry because the Swift Boat story dominated news in August and fed right into the Republican convention, and the Kerry campaign never was able to adequately respond.
It’s silly for RNC officials to think they can orchestrate a process that will protect the eventual nominee from serious scrutiny during the primary season, and to the extent that they’re able to do so, to think that a reduced level of scrutiny is automatically a good thing. Whatever one’s assessment of the Romney campaign, few would dispute that its high point came when Romney pummeled Obama in their first debate. And there’s good reason to believe that the practice Romney gained during the seemingly endless cycle of Republican primary debates against spirited rivals including Gingrich and Rick Santorum worked to his advantage, especially against the out-of-practice Obama.
Given that Clinton is expected to coast to the Democratic nomination, it would actually be best for Republicans to have a well vetted, well scrutinized candidate going against her. Trying to coddle the nominee in advance of a campaign against the Clinton machine will only backfire.
