Category Archives: Republicans

How to Fix the Nomination Process

Whether you are a Trump supporter, Cruz supporter, Kasich supporter, Sanders supporter, Hillary supporter, or a disinterested observer fed up with the whole thing like myself, we can all agree that the nomination process is a complete disaster. Not that any of this is new to this particular election; the 2016 campaign has only exposed the flaws in the process that have existed since the earliest days of the leading political parties.

No, neither Trump nor Sanders are having the nomination ‘stolen’ from them, at least not in a sense where actual ‘cheating’ is happening (best I can tell from afar anyway). The fact that Trump doesn’t understand how the process works does not mean Cruz is doing something wrong. And the irony of ironies where some of Sanders’s delegates are being redistributed…well, Hillary Clinton would never cheat right?

If the argument is that the game is rigged at worst or just a little screwy at best then I can certainly agree with that. The rules and process as was set up long before the 2016 campaign is really what is causing confusion leaving many primary voters angry and disillusioned. While it may be too late to cure what ails the nomination process for 2016, I believe I have a few ideas that would vastly improve the process and I would encourage any political party to at least give this a try.

A National Primary Day

This incredibly long drawn out byzantine primary system has outlived its usefulness. There is no reason to have a few states vote early while other vote later. If it’s good enough to have the general election on one day than the primary should be no different. My proposal is to have every state and territory vote on the same day, say 40-60 days before the party’s convention. If the states want to follow roughly the same calendar as the traditional primaries holding town halls, debates, or even non-binding straw polls then by all means, do so. The days of a handful of states determining who emerges should be done away with forever.

Allocation of Delegates

In the 2016 South Carolina Primary Donald Trump “won” the election with a whopping 32.5% of the vote. To put this another way, 67.5% of South Carolina voters voted for someone other than Donald Trump *but* because South Carolina is winner take all, Trump will be awarded all 50 of the state’s delegates! While I’m not one of these people who think that “majority rule” is a good thing in and of itself (actually it’s often terrible), it seems that in a primary or caucus which purports to reflect the “will of the people” should at a minimum, require that the winning candidate actually earned the majority of the vote.

If the goal of the nomination process is to nominate an individual who represents the “will of the people” in the party then the parties are not doing a very good job in achieving that goal. My proposal to improve this aspect of the process is as follows:

Each state/territory is to have one delegate for each congressional district and two at large delegates. Each would-be delegate is bound to a particular candidate and can only become a delegate if his/her candidate wins 50%+1 of the vote in the congressional district or, in the case of the at large would-be delegates, 50%+1 of the entire state, commonwealth, or territory. The candidates would keep every delegate s/he won (i.e. no winner take all states). The 50%+1 threshold would be easily achieved by implementing instant runoff voting (this is key). This way every vote actually would matter and the “spoiler effect” would be minimized if not eliminated.

Rather than explain how instant runoff voting (a.k.a. alternative voting) works for those who are not familiar, here’s a short video:

The Nominating Convention

The convention would operate more or less like it does now. The delegates would then go about choosing the nominee by either multiple rounds of voting or using the instant runoff method as described above. Because all the delegates would be bound to their candidate (at least to start with) in the former method s/he must vote for the candidate in the first round, in the latter s/he must rank the bound candidate #1 and the candidate of his or her choice for #2, #3, and so on. Whichever way the convention decided to go, the important thing is no winner would be selected without a majority recorded vote (i.e. no voice votes where the Chairperson decides which way the vote went based on his/her opinion).

Oh yeah, one other thing: no other candidates could be nominated who was not running on National Primary Day.

Would this process be perfect? Of course not. There is no system I can think of which will prevent a truly terrible person from being nominated or even elected. If there’s a better way, I would certainly would love to hear it. That being said, I believe this process is much superior than the one either party is using now.

All this makes me wonder though: if the parties are having this much trouble determining the will of the majority of their party members (assuming that’s really what they are trying to do), how can they be trusted to solve the more complex problems they want us to believe they can solve?
raptorblank
One Point of Clarification

If you read carefully, you will notice that everything I wrote is just a suggestion about how any political party can improve its nomination process. None of this in any way is meant to advocate that the law should be changed to comply with my opinion. Its free advice and the parties can take it or leave it (and they probably will leave it…who am I to advise them right?).

I’ve come across some individuals who are upset about how some state parties have gone about choosing delegates (which I can sympathize with; I hate how the Colorado Republican Party chooses delegates). What everyone needs to understand though is that regardless of what they think they know about how the system works, the U.S. is not a democracy. It never was and never was intended to be. Some misguided individuals believe that the shenanigans (as they see it anyway) taking place in some of these state conventions is tantamount to treason against the U.S. Constitution.

For those who think this way, I’m about to drop a giant atomic truth bomb so here it goes…

There is no constitutional right for the average citizen to vote in a presidential election (neither in the party primaries nor in the general election). No, really there’s not.

For those who don’t believe me, the part of the U.S. Constitution that addresses how the POTUS is to be elected is located in Article II, Section 1, Paragraphs 2 through 4. I’ll share the most relevant part (paragraph 2):

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

As stated from the excerpt above, each state determines how Electors are picked to vote for POTUS. This means that if the state legislature wants to choose Electors by drawing names out of a hat or by roshambo, the state legislature may do so. As it happens, every state legislature has decided that the people have a right to vote for the Electors provided they are eligible to vote (as determined by that state’s laws).

Did you notice something else? What about all the explaining about the nomination process of delegates of a particular political party?

Read the excerpt again, no actually read Article II in its entirety because I know some people reading this think that I cherry picked one small part from the U.S. Constitution to make my point.

Did you notice that there wasn’t a single word about political parties, much less how they go about choosing a nominee for president?

Themoreyouknow

Lessons From POTUS 2016: Around the Bonfire of the GOP

I hate POTUS 2016.

I hate all the candidates who aren’t libertarians.

I hate the voters continuing to lend their support to the authoritarian politics of the two major parties.

Most of all, I hate the endless raving about a possible Trump candidacy.

Trump Isn’t the Problem. His Supporters Are. An ocean of words has been written about Donald Trump’s detestable politics and undiagnosed personality disorders. Every one of those words is true. He is a sleazy multi-level marketer with a cheap spray tan and a bad comb-over; a low functioning bully with the attention span of a second-grader, whose first policy instinct will always be authoritarianism and who lacks even the most basic conceptions of constitutional governance, separation of powers and individual freedom.

If nominated, he will, without one shred of doubt, lose the general election to Hillary Clinton.

Nonetheless, anyone who thinks the GOP establishment can do much to stop this slow motion train wreck misunderstands the nature of government.

Government is not the party elite, big money donors, or the politicians in Washington. Government is us. We the people. The voters (and non-voters) who put and keep those politicians in office. Ourselves, our neighbors, our friends, family and co-workers.

The establishment cannot fight Trump because he is not the target. His supporters are.

How has endlessly pointing out how racist, xenophobic and stupid they are worked thus far?

Squeezing out other candidates won’t force any voters to shift their support to an establishment pick. As Trump himself discerns, with his trademark narcissistic clarity (but his detractors somehow miss), those supporters might just as well shift to Trump. And squeezing him out won’t force any of them to turn out for some other, better, more respectable, nominee in the general.

Therein lies the rub.

Trump’s candidacy reveals something ugly and festering on the American right, something with the potential to do nuclear-level damage to the GOP’s credibility with everyone from moderates, independents and swing voters to Christians and mainstream Republicans.

On the other hand, if the party squeezes him out—whether through an onslaught of establishment attacks or a brokered convention—it risks alienating his pissed off contingency of Republican voters.

At a time when voters are fleeing the major parties in droves, the GOP is between a rock and a hard place. A Trump candidacy might be fatal, but so might the loss of his fans. To move forward without them, the party would need to replace its Trump-wing with a new supply of liberty voters.

There’s a lesson in the numbers, for a party willing to make hard choices, and it’s not the only one of the 2016 cycle.

Identity Politics Has Failed, and Pandering Is an Antiquated Campaign Strategy. Women are not breaking for Clinton. Evangelicals are not breaking for Cruz. Hispanics are not breaking for Cruz/Rubio.

It turns out those demographics, like all the others, are not stereotypic representatives of monolithic groups, but individuals with political concerns that transcend gender, heritage and religion. Candidates who ignore this modern reality will continue to be confused about why Evangelicals and Hispanics are voting for Trump—and continue suffering backlashes for their insulting rhetorical devices (like the importance of beginning each day on one’s knees or special places in hell for free-thinking women).

Money Does Not Buy Elections. There’s some evidence money buys politicians and pundits. But Trump’s candidacy annihilates the myth that an entrenched two-party system, dripping in advertising wealth, subliminally messages clueless voters into supporting the status quo.

Neither establishment donors nor the politicians themselves are in control this election cycle. Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and their respective Super PACs paid through the nose to perform poorly in the early voting states. Trump, on the other hand, without the support of any Super PAC, is paying minimally to outperform expectations.

That Trump is a phenomenon unto himself might explain why it costs him so little to win. It does not explain why Bush and Christie have paid so dearly to lose.

What does explain it is that rebellious primary voters are not beholden to any amount of campaign advertising, political spending, establishment credibility or ideological purity.

The GOP Might Not Survive the Trump Campaign, But the Country Undoubtedly Will. Trump is a monarchist who wants to use the office of President to crown himself king and savior, while cutting through the red tape for his next casino parking lot. Unfortunately, all too many people—including plenty of Republicans—are ready to go along with the cult of an imperial presidency.

Notwithstanding that problematic trend, we still have Congress, the Constitution, and the limits on presidential power set forth in Article II.

That might not be true if Ted Cruz got his way and turned SCOTUS into just another political branch of government. Party loyalists desperate to stop Trump may not understand how dangerous that is.

Scalia did.

As a libertarian, I have never enjoyed an election cycle in which the viable candidates were anything but clowns. For me, 2016 is just par for the course. The rest of the electorate is now feeling the way I always do.

Maybe now is a good time to ponder what they’re so desperately trying to save.

Unless It Can Reinvent Itself, the GOP May Not Be Worth Saving. I suspect my political aims are vastly different from those of most Trump supporters. I nevertheless also suspect we have similar reactions to the prediction that he is going to destroy the GOP and/or conservative movement:

Are we supposed to conclude that’s a bug…or a feature?

Amid all the handwringing about the wreckage that will be left in the wake of Trump’s candidacy, precious little is devoted to convincing voters there’s anything worth saving.

Remind me again, what is the point of the GOP?

muh roadsIt’s clearly not to restrain spending. Once they obtained control of both houses of Congress, Republicans drove a stake through the Budget Control Act, broke budget caps, suspended the debt ceiling and doc-fixed Medicare to the tune of $500 billion. Along the way, they extended No Child Left Behind, passed a $305 billion highway bill (muh roads!), and reauthorized Ex-Im.

They ended last year with a $1.8 trillion omnibus spending bill.

Senator Marco Rubio did not even show up to vote.

If they aren’t going to rein in the scope of government, cut spending, and balance the budget, what do we have Republicans for again, exactly?

I’ll grant them abortion. That’s one. What else? Carpet-bombing and traditional marriage?

This is me yawning.

If the GOP wants voters like me to come to its rescue, it’s going to have to start selling something we want to buy. It will need to cut lose the growing horde of populist authoritarians, the seedy underbelly of racists and xenophobes venturing from their closets, and the dying remnants of traditional marriage zealots. It will need to replenish its base instead with the growing numbers of liberty-minded voters currently spread out across the two major parties, a few third parties, and the sizable ranks of swing-voting independents.

It will need to unite its disparate factions around common principles of limited government and apply those principles consistently across social, economic and national security issues.

And it will need to convince us that this time it means it.

Sarah Baker is a libertarian, attorney and writer. She lives in Montana with her daughter and a house full of pets.

Sorry, Donald. Cruz and Rubio are BOTH Eligible for President

If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say that Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are ineligible to run for president because they are not “natural-born citizens,” I would have more money than the recent $1.5 Billion Powerball winners. Donald Trump is wrong. The Constitution and case law are clear. Both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are natural-born citizens, and therefore eligible to run for president.

Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution makes it clear that only a natural-born citizen, who is at least 35 years old, is eligible to be president:

No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States.

So are Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio natural-born citizens under the Constitution? The answer is yes. While the Constitution does not define natural-born, statutes and the common law, dating back to pre-colonial English common law have addressed and settled this issue.

Ted Cruz is a Natural-Born U.S. Citizen

Ted Cruz was born December 22, 1970 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. His father, Rafael Cruz, was born in Cuba and his mother, Eleanor Wilson, was born in Wilmington, Delaware. The family relocated to Texas in 1974.

Most legal scholars agree that a natural-born citizen is one who does not need to go through the naturalization process. The Naturalization Act of 1790 addresses the issue of children born outside our borders to American citizens:

[T]he children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens:  Provided, that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States:  Provided also, that no person heretofore proscribed by any States, shall be admitted a citizen as aforesaid, except by an Act of the Legislature of the State in which such person was proscribed.

Many birthers, such as Ann Coulter, make the argument that at the time the Naturalization Act of 1790 was passed, citizenship only passed through the father, requiring that the father must be a U.S. Citizen. While this is true, they hold the false belief that the Constitution has not been amended to change this. At the time of the signing of the Act, women also could not own property without her husband. Since it is not mentioned or amended in the Constitution, I hope that Coulter is prepared to forfeit her property she owns on her own since that is her interpretation of the Constitution. But I digress. Furthermore, the definition of a natural-born citizen was later codified at 8 U.S.C. 1401(d). It reads in pertinent part:

The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth:

(d) a person born outside of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is a citizen of the United States who has been physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for a continuous period of one year prior to the birth of such person, and the other of whom is a national, but not a citizen of the United States;

Since Ted Cruz’s mother is a natural-born citizen, Ted Cruz is also a natural born citizen. It does not matter that he was born in Canada. The Supreme Court has also answered this question. In Rogers v. Bellei, 401 U.S. 815 (1971), the Court held that the federal government may revoke the citizenship of a natural-born citizen if certain requirements were not met. In this case, Aldo Mario Bellei was born in Italy to an American mother and an Italian father. Mr. Bellei held both Italian and U.S. citizenship.

While the primary issue reviewed in Bellei was not on the definition of a natural-born citizen, the Court first had to determine that Mr. Bellei was a natural-born citizen. Upon determining that Mr. Bellei was a natural-born U.S. citizen, the Court held that the federal government may set a condition subsequent on citizenship for those born outside the United States. Specifically, the government may revoke the citizenship of natural-born citizens born outside the United States when citizens do not establish domicile within the United States by age 23 and remain for at least five (5) years. See Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952 sec. 311.

In the case of Ted Cruz, he moved to the United States at the age of three (3) years old and has maintained domicile in the United States since then. Therefore, he is a natural-born citizen of the United States and eligible to run for and serve as President of the United States.

Marco Rubio is a Natural-Born U.S. Citizen

Presidential candidate, Donald Trump recently stated that he is unsure that Marco Rubio is eligible to run for president. The case for Rubio’s citizenship is more clear-cut than the case for Cruz. Marco Rubio was born on May 28, 1971 in Miami, FL. His parents came to the United States in 1956. At the time of Rubio’s birth, his parents were Permanent Residents of the United States. This means that his parents were here legally with their “green cards.” Federal law is clear that those born on U.S. soil and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States are natural-born citizens. 8 U.S.C. 1401(a) reads in pertinent part:

The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth:

(a) a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.
Of course, the 14th Amendment sec. 1 provides that:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
(emphasis added)
Since Marco Rubio was born on American soil (last time I checked, Miami is still American soil), and he is subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, he is clearly a natural-born citizen.
The Supreme Court has also ruled on this. In U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), the Court held that a child born on U.S. soil to permanent residents of the United States is a natural-born citizen by virtue of the 14th Amendment. Justice Horace Gray, citing to U.S. v. Rhodes (1866), stated in his majority opinion that:
All persons born in the allegiance of the King are natural-born subjects, and all persons born in the allegiance of the United States are natural-born citizens. Birth and allegiance go together. Such is the rule of the common law, and it is the common law of this country, as well as of England. . . .
Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. at 662. (emphasis added)
Conclusion
The fact that Donald Trump and other birthers would raise questions as to the eligibility of either Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio to run for president is absolutely absurd. Any litigation of these issues is frivolous and a waste of taxpayer money. It is this lawyer’s belief that anyone who brings such a frivolous suit should be sanctioned and responsible for government attorney fees. Enough is enough. It is time to put the birther argument to rest.
Albert is a licensed attorney and holds a J.D. from Barry University School of Law as well as an MBA and BA in Political Science from The University of Central Florida. He is a conservative libertarian and his interests include judicial politics, criminal procedure, and elections. He has one son named Albert and a black lab puppy named Lincoln. In his spare time, he plays and coaches soccer.

Cruz Ad: ‘Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Clinton’

I’m by no means a Ted Cruz supporter but damn this is clever. If you think you have seen something like this before, this is a parody of that wonderful scene from the movie Office Space.

Hat Tip: The Blaze

Revisiting Rand Paul’s Campaign Again

Friday, I wrote a piece about Rand Paul’s presidential campaign and why it is failing. Some people disagreed with it saying I left out a few things. Some of the things they I said I left out was the poor polling numbers of guys like Rick Santorum this time in 2011. Another thing, they said I left out was the fact the campaign was “turning things around.” Finally, some people said I left out a recent poll that showed Paul at 7% nationally.

Guess what, these people were right. I didn’t have all of my facts lined up for that post. I did my readers a disservice. I’m sorry. I’m going to try to make it right by looking at those facts.

The Santorum 2011 comparisons

One of the things some critics said was that I wasn’t looking at the big picture. After all, it is early October. Here’s where the race stood nationally four years ago today.

RCP1

Ignore the top numbers and look at the numbers highlighted on the chart. Perry was beginning his decline after his awful debates. Romney was holding steady as he had all year. Gingrich more or less held steady as did Paul. Bachmann was heading towards her collapse after the victory at the Ames Straw Poll. Finally, Santorum was at the bottom at 3%.

Where Santorum ultimately shined was in Iowa. Here’s what polling looked like 4 years ago today:

RCP2

Again, Perry on top with Bachmann in 2nd. Cain was about to begin his surge which ended after sexual harrassment allegations surfaced. Santorum was at 4.3% and second to last. The top 3 in Iowa wound up being Romney (who was 3rd in this poll), Santorum, and then Paul (who was 4th). To add insult to injury, Santorum only raised a little over $682,000 in the previous quarter.

Here’s how Santorum turned it around, he made this a one-state race for him. He visited every county in Iowa and he tapped his base of evangelicals. He was also helped by Perry’s poor debate performances, the collapse of Herman Cain, and Michele Bachmann’s collapse over her anti-vaxxer comments.

Here’s where the Santorum comparison fails, it’s a much more crowded field than 2011-12. Paul is currently tied for 8th in Iowa. Plus, Paul has a negative X-factor in play, the indictments of his political allies related to the Kent Sorenson vote bying scandal. Caucus states though are a pain in the ass to poll because of the limited number of people who actually attend them.

Is the campaigning turning things around?

That’s a line I keep getting from Paul supporters. The best example of this thinking is an article on Buzzfeed from Friday.

Here’s the thing, they may be doing it. However, there is no way we can know if this is true until a few weeks from now. If the polls start moving upwards, more money starts coming in, and the campaign settles on a strategy; they can say he’s turning things around. This one is wait and see.

What about that new Reuters poll?

I was too dismissive of a new poll from Reuters/Ipsos that came out on Friday. It showed Paul at 6.2% which is an increase from 2.6% from last week. Before I wrote the first piece, I did not know about it. I was initially dismissive of it because it was a poll of all adults. However, Reuters/Ipsos lets you put filters on the poll by limiting it to likely Republican voters. With that filter, Paul’s numbers are 5.6% which is an increase from 2.5%.

I dismissed the poll too rashly. However, the polls from Pew, Gravis, and IBD/Tipp all continue to show Paul in the 2-3% range.

Long story short, I messed up in the first post because I was too dismissive of evidence from the other side. Part of that is due to my own personal prejudice against hardcore Paul supporters from my many online battles with them since 2007. That is 100% on me and I owe my readers an apology.

Now is Rand Paul going to drop out of the race? He has $2 million left, he has no need to at least before the next debate on October 28th. He has plenty of time to turn his campaign around. Whether or not he does is another matter entirely.

I’m one of the original co-founders of The Liberty Papers all the way back in 2005. Since then, I wound up doing this blogging thing professionally. Now I’m running the site now. You can find my other work at The Hayride.com and Rare. You can also find me over at the R Street Institute.
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