Poor Chester. Never had a chance…
The Republican National Committee is being criticized for announcing that it will be holding no debates and no primaries for the upcoming GOP Presidential nomination process. That means, naturally, that the Republicans are planning on re-nominating President Donald J. Trump, as they should.
Every one-term President should be presented to the American people for their verdict regarding whether they want him to continue after four years in office. Since that is the case, there is no justification for holding a competition for the nomination that wastes time, money, and creates division in the party.
In the 21st Century, a sitting President seeking a second term will be renominated. The last time a President who wanted to serve a second term was denied the nomination was in 1884, when the Republican Party denied the nomination to President Chester A. Arthur, and a) he had not been elected (as Vice -President, he became President when Garfield died from the incompetent medical treatment he received for what should have been a non-lethal bullet wound and b) was dying anyway. Since then, no sitting President who wanted to continue in office has been denied the chance to try.
Those who oppose Trump and want to see him gone, mostly Democrats but also the GOP NeverTrumpers, want the President primaried because there is a prominent theory that this weakens a re-election effort. Both George H. W. Bush and Carter had to run in primaries, and both lost their re-election bids, though in both cases I think they would have probably lost anyway. Primary losses also persuaded President Lyndon Johnson to withdraw his candidacy and not run for re-election in 1968.
The RNC passed a resolution pledging “undivided support” for the President, which means that the only announced competitor for the nomination thus far, pseudo-Republican William Weld, will have to go door to door, or something.
There are other good reasons not to make a President fight for renomination. A campaign takes time away from the job of governing. Since no legitimately elected President has been denied a nomination since before the Civil War, it makes no sense to hold a time-consuming charade that has the special bonus of hurting the party’s chance of holding the White House.
A political party’s job is to nominate competent, skilled, trustworthy individuals for elected offices. How they decide to do that job is their own business. The old nomination process where it was all hashed out at the convention (0r in smoke-filled hotel rooms) worked pretty well. Primaries appear democratic but really aren’t, as relatively few voters participate and the systems of awarding delegates are baroque and inconsistent.
Parties have sometimes used hybrid systems, where the party’s Old Hands have enhanced influence that gives a party worried that the primaries have stuck it with a dud a last ditch escape route. That’s fine too; Ethics Alarms advocated the GOP accessing its emergency plan when the primaries had produced a presumptive nominee named Trump.
The only conduct that is unethical when it comes to deciding a Presidential nominee is when a party announces its rules, and secretly rigs the nomination for a candidate in defiance of those rules while pretending that its a fair contest.
Of course, no political party would ever dream of doing THAT…
Ethics Alarms 
Do you mean like having somebody steal the debate questions for you? Nah! Never happen…oh…wait.
Or locking state delegates out of the room so the losing candidate could get the electors.
This is the all-time did mbwst thing I have ever seen you post.
If William Weld wants to be humiliated in a race against Trump, he and his supporters deserve that opportunity
Jack, you would look pretty good wearing a Debbie Wasserman-Schultz fright wig.
Not sure why this post is so dumb. I get that Jack may be conceding to incumbency, but he is correct: an RNC primary season,would be a waste of time. The incumbent (that would be Trump) would win so why go through the motions? The parties get to decide who the candidate will be and each party sets those rules. A disaster of monumental proportions would have to happen for Trump to lose renomination.
jvb
It’s dumb because it doesn’t allow progressives and Democrats to manufacture more hope of getting rid of Trump without having to beat him. Pretty obvious.
Inexplicable non-logic! There’s no right to demand a chance to run for President in a primary or debate the President, nor should there be. Now, an intelligent argument would be, “What about someone with a plausible chance of winning the nomination, say, Mitt Romney?” I would still argue that the GOP would be a) wise b) certainly within its rights, since it can do whatever it chooses, to take the safer course and not go through the process, but at least there’s an argument. You are really arguing that any Bozo—and Weld IS a Bozo–including fake Republicans (you know, like Bernie is a fake Democrat), Dennis Rodman, William Hung, Pauly Shore, Foo-Foo the Ferret boy—can just say, “Duh, I want to be Prez!” and the GOP has to make their President jump through hoops for six months? THAT’s smart?
I could care less if the GOP holds a show primary so a feckless conservative Democrat can run against Trump as a Republican, but your comment about Jack was unnecessary and ad hominem. I suspect it will be unwelcome with him, and it is manifestly unwelcome with me.
Try to be a little more classy.
No, on second thought, don’t. It might confuse the innocent into thinking you actually are thoughtful rather than simply belligerent.
I think it’s a brilliant decision. If there are no serious competitors for the Republican nomination, why hold debates? The Democrats are furious because they can’t continue their rants, their impeachment attempts, and ways to denigrate Trump at any cost. If no Republican wants to run against Trump, of what exactly would the Republican debates consist? Democrats are furious: outdone again. Honestly, some of them must now regret their nomination of Hillary: that has done more to harm their party, and civil discourse of any kind. And of course they can’t renege on that decision — only move forward with their hatred , the sure knowledge that absent Hillary Trump would not have been elected, that his election was a spit in the eye of the Democratic machine, and they have no one, no one, with any credibility to put up against him in the upcoming election. They blew it. They know it. And they will never, never concede to that mistake. Ideological morons.
It’s pretty funny. Phil’s party held fake debates and primaries to hide the fact that Hillary was, in effect, already nominated. All genuine potential candidates had been told to back off, so Hillary was left to “compete’ against a non-Democrat socialist wacko jsut having fun, two party flip-flopping eccentrics, and a not-ready-for prime time ex-Maryland governor—in other word, the equivalent of the palookas sent into the ring to get clobbered by a real contender so he can enhance his record.
Nope, there is no right to a primary and there’s no right to determine how a political party conducts its nomination process when it has a sitting officeholder. But it sure would make it easier for the other side if they could try to drive a wedge into the other side’s ranks by Michael Moore-esque statements to the effect of: “We know there are some decent Republicans out there. You guys are few and far between, and mostly in the sane blue and purple states, so you don’t get much play, but there are probably enough of you to change things for the better for all of us if you all stick together. If enough of you turn out in this primary cycle, you might be able to push Trump off the ticket. At a minimum, you can weaken him enough for our nominee to win. We’re not asking you to do this for us. We’re asking you to do it for your neighbor in his skullcap and beard who isn’t a terrorist, for the nice guy who stocks the supermarket shelves who just came here looking for a better life for him and his family, for your family member who’s gay, and for all the women in your life whose autonomy and dignity is at stake. I hope you’ll find the courage to do the right thing.”
The R party move seems wise. But I think it’s a hoping-for-the-best move.
That party just doesn’t know how to win. When it wins, it wins almost accidentally, serendipitously, and with more luck than Lucky, like they did with TRUMP. They don’t know how to get out the vote. They don’t know how to entice and excite the young. They don’t know how to make their better ideas most attractive and winning. They don’t know how to build coalitions. They don’t know how to penetrate hostile strongholds, and come away with swayed voters, and weakened, ever weaker, if not teetering or flipped once-strongholds. (They barely make an effort at any of those things.)
They know less and less how to keep the trust of us old voters who have been there and done that (voting) for longer than most of their top leadership, or at least, most of their field of best candidates, has been alive. They’ve reluctantly stood behind a President they didn’t want, and have done virtually zip to defend him from the plotters of the coup against him. Because to stand behind him is to risk being called even more racist-misogynist than he is. To defend against the coup is to risk being branded an even more evil HitlerNazi and danger-to-democracy than he is. Now, they’re even letting their sworn enemies take credit for whatever is going well with the overall economy.
Let’s face it: It’s less work and a safer crouch for everyone else in the R party to just let TRUMP stand all alone, so that only he has to suffer all the slings and arrows against any and all ideas for better, wiser governance, more constructive policies, compelling national vision, and leadership of the society (such as it is). “TRUMP’s party” – which it never was, really – is setting itself up for unprecedented defeat in 2020. Primaries, or no primaries. No matter the turnout. No matter how the Electoral College will vote – rigged state-by-state, or not rigged. Changing demographics, and changing “ethics” among those demographics (read: ever more hardened and pro-totalitarian, leftist ideological-emotional mass sociopathy, aka Marxist hive-mindedness), are going to relegate the Republican Party to an ash heap of history.
But first, the R party will be relegated to a steaming pile of self-composting minority views, with a rapidly diminishing voter base in support of those views. (Think evolution, like formerly Republican California, coast-to-coast.) A few die-hard, unorganized non-leftists might hold out until their guns are taken away from their cold, dead fingers and their kids shipped off to hard-leftist foster homes. But the Hasty Retreat By the Right and From the Right will soon commence like a flood, with conservatives and libertarians sheepishly scattering and blending-in faster and in greater numbers than all the migrants set to crash the southern non-border and ports of entry over the next ten years.
Just watch. Ghetto’s comin’ to us all. And the “Democrats” will control every morsel.