Oh please let this happen. Take it away, Team WIN THE MORNING:
Officials in five Southern states — Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas — are coordinating to hold their primary on March 1, 2016. Texas and Florida are considering also holding a primary the same day but may wait until later in the month. Either way, March 1 would be a Southern Super Tuesday, voting en masse on the heels of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.
The joint primary, which appears increasingly likely to happen, would present a crucial early test for Republican White House hopefuls among the party’s most conservative voters. It could, in theory, boost a conservative alternative to a Republican who has emerged as the establishment favorite from the four states that kick off the nominating process. But one risk is that the deep-red complexion of the Southern states’ primary electorates would empower a candidate who can’t win in general election battlegrounds like Ohio and Colorado.
Republicans from the South say their states make up the heart of the GOP and that it’s only fitting the region should have commensurate say over whom the party puts forward to compete for the White House. Proponents are already dubbing March 1 the “SEC primary,” after the NCAA’s powerhouse Southeastern Conference.
Yes, please let Texas and Florida and the Deep South pick the GOP ’16 candidate by St. Patrick’s Day, for maximum gaffe exposure to the country. I’m all for this. Let the people see exactly what they are getting from putting the SEC states in charge of the Republican primary process, do it early, and let them sweat it out for eight months under the klieg lights before they crack.
This is a great plan.
Mandalay
I’ll ask you if you still feel that way once President Santorum is in charge.
CONGRATULATIONS!
I see this as a sign of complete and utter panic by the GOP’s Money Division, who is terrified that hordes of teabaggers will show up on national TV and cheer for executions and people dying without health care.
Again.
You can bet the fix is in already. Unlike you, I don’t think this is a great plan, I think this gives them much needed time for damage repair and PR coordination. All of which they are very good at. A long GOP primary benefits Dems. This will not.
srv
You know how all the liberal hippies and muslim converts change their names?
One of these politicians needs to change their name to Jefferson Davis for Southern Super Tuesday.
El Caganer
@Mandalay: You still believe that urban legend about a tidal wave of Santorum washing over this country?
Corner Stone
@Mandalay:
Pres Santo can’t win Southern primaries.
feebog
More like the rectum…
dedc79
Note that this same schedule would apply for the Dems too. I imagine that would help Hillary, although I guess that depends on who she is up against.
Karen in GA
In the last two Republican Presidential primary elections, one candidate would lead until people got to see just how crazy he or she was, at which time they abandoned that candidate for another until they saw how crazy that candidate was, etcetera and so on, rinse and repeat, until they finally gave up and settled on the least creepy performer in the clown show. Would this make it more likely that they get stuck with whichever crazy bastard they happened to like that particular week?
ETA: Foaming-at-the-mouth crazy, not the cleaned-up-sociopathic-boss-suit-and-tie crazy or the Winnie-the-Pooh-looking-“we-thought-we-knew-him” crazy they ended up going with in 2012 and 2008, respectively.
opiejeanne
This post is the first that made me laugh today. (News has been so grim recently). So, thank you Zandar.
JustRuss
@CONGRATULATIONS!: +1. If the GOP nominee has it wrapped up early, that gives him/her months to reel in the crazy talk and spout moderate platitudes. Given the spotty memory of our media and voting public–remember how the shutdown was going to wipe out the GOP in the 2014 elections?–I think it’s a good strategy for them.
KG
Assuming we have at least one candidate from Texas (Cruz) and one from Florida (Jeb), and maybe even one from Arkansas (I still say Huckabee will win if he enters), an SEC primary would likely not have that much of an impact. Most recent polls have Jeb winning Florida, Cruz winning Texas, Huckabee winning Arkansas. Huckabee also leads in Mississippi while Jeb leads in Alabama. No numbers on Georgia or Tennessee. For what it’s worth, in the early states: Iowa likes Huckabee and Mitt (no, really). Jeb is leading in South Carolina (because, of course). Nevada doesn’t have any polling. And New Hampshire can’t decide between Christie, Paul, Jeb, Mitt, and Ben fucking Carson.
Granted, not all of those guys are going to run, but my guess is that at least three (Jeb, Cruz, Paul) do and maybe two more consider it (Christie and Huckabee). Carson has no chance.
In short, it’s going to be a clusterfuck.
Mandalay
@El Caganer:
Of course not. You are far more likely to be our next president than Santorum, even if you’re not running.
Mandalay
@Corner Stone:
You are as sharp as a beach ball.
Tone in DC
To me, the g00pers lost in 2000; the Supremes stepped in with their protection clause bullshit and handed that one to Dubya.
With that caveat in mind, the wingers have lost 4 of the last 5 presidential elections.
I give them little credit this time around, despite Hillary’s myriad shortcomings.
Corner Stone
@Mandalay: But…a beach ball doesn’t have any edges, let alone any sharp ones?
KG
@Corner Stone: hell, Santorum can’t win general elections anywhere.
Corner Stone
@Karen in GA:
I remember it a little differently. ISTM that they rotated into and out of the next *crazy* candidate. They didn’t abandon one because they displayed they were to crazy to exist in free society. They left their camp to ramp onto the next craziest a-hole that was saying the bigger crazy shit.
It was a case of the Big Crazy, until it got down to the short and curlies. Then the R’s do what they always do. They fall in line.
C.V. Danes
Exactly.
Howard Beale IV
This looks like prime ratfucking territory to me.
jl
But, is this good news for Ben Carson? Or rick Perry (without his Clark Kent glasses, which look too nerdy down south). Or an opening for Lil’ Newtie to make a comeback, at many intersections on multiple levels?
The mind reels at the possibilities.
Spinwheel
So Jeb Bush wins the Texas and Florida primaries and has 8 months to run anti-Clinton ads while everyone else falls in line.
Why yes, this does seem like a great plan. For the Republicans.
Karen in GA
@Corner Stone: Would a shorter primary season mean less time for them to fall in line? I mean, they wouldn’t have time to sample all of the crazy on offer.
NonyNony
@Corner Stone:
Eh, that isn’t quite what I remember either. It seemed more like they’d latch onto one crazy NotRomney candidate, then FoxNews would go on an all-out blitz to show why that candidate was unelectable in a general election – usually by sticking them in front of a microphone and asking them questions – with the intent of getting the voters to fall in line behind Romney. Instead the voters would latch onto some other NotRomney candidate and the cycle would repeat. Eventually they ran out of NotRomney candidates, sighed, and resigned themselves to Romney being the best candidate they had.
But it was all about flailing around to find a NotRomney to back. If that dynamic doesn’t exist this time around, I wouldn’t expect the jumping from one crazy candidate to the next to happen either. If, OTOH, FoxNews decides to go all-in on Jeb Bush, or if Romney tries to make another run for it, then I’d expect to see it happen again.
Tommy
@Corner Stone: I say this over and over here. My parents are not liberals. My mom voted for Obama because of Palin. My mother cusses like once in a decade. Said “Palin is shit all stupid” when asked why she did not vote for him. Run out Jeb Bush she will vote for him. Run out somebody like Carson and she will flee.
Corner Stone
@NonyNony:
Both of them are going to make a run at it, so I guess we’ll see.
I still say it’s Mitt 46%, Jeb 44% and random crazy rounding out the top 3.
jl
@Spinwheel:
Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas, Texas and Florida.
I dunno whether that sounds like Jeb Bush country, except for Florida. Maybe New York or Virginia could join in?
gratuitous
Wow, is this great news for John McCain, or what?
It’ll be interesting to see how this scheme shakes out, if indeed it comes to pass (I like calling it “the SEC primary”). If the “wrong” candidate has caught lightning in a bottle that week (Ben Carson, Michele Bachmann, Jon Huntsman), it’s possible the Republican establishment will have to spend the next few months undoing the damage they’ve done to themselves. But I think they’re savvier than that. Probably.
Whether this is a brilliant development or a Baldrick cunning plan may be discernible only in retrospect.
Corner Stone
@Tommy: Your mom sounds like an interesting person.
El Caganer
I’m going with Doc Carson – crazy as a shitbug, brilliant real-life career, he’s perfect. Well, except for being black and all.
jibeaux
If this thing turns into Bush v. Clinton, I will have to turn off my tv and internet for eight damn months. I gotta back Perry in this one, due mostly to the high potential for excellent drinking games.
Woodrowfan
yeah, running the right-wing southerner sure backfired on the republicans in 2000.
This “south will rise again!” primary will work great for us though, if different repubs win the different states, thus ensuring a long, drawn-out fight.
El Caganer
@jibeaux: Christie could provide some entertainment value, too.
ruemara
I not sure how we get the idea that they pick someone and run from the crazy to the next, until they’re stuck. They run to the crazy. They adore it. The primaries are the distilled essence of the parties. They pick the ones with best stark raving lunacy wrapped in a thin veneer of respectability. What they’re disappointed in is the regular voters who don’t get the appeal of those perfect candidates, so they have to switch to the other guy. And on down the chain until they get to least beloved, not-quite-as-crazy, semi-sorta mainstreamish. If the rest of America would just fall in love with those common sense conservative bullshit talking points, the first primary winner would be the final candidate. Problem for them is, there’s a line of stupid and lunatic that the rest of American won’t join them in.
Tommy
@Corner Stone: She is hard to explain. I think the first I learned was mom working at a rape crisis center in the 80s.I was just a little kid at the time. My love of women grew from that point. My mom is maybe my best friend in the world. She is a wonderful lady.
Tommy
@Corner Stone: My mom runs elections in her district. She calls me every day and asks if plan to vote. Go vote. She knows I will not most times vote for her party. But I need to vote. I always felt this was like the coolest thing in the world.
Villago Delenda Est
Oh, go ahead. Do it, you twits. Make the GOP nominee a sure thing for a crushing defeat in November.
The briar patch is waiting.
Corner Stone
@Karen in GA:
IMO party bosses want a short primary season and as few debates as they can get.
Otherwise you get the repeated chance of a Stockdale moment, “Gridlock!”
Which is funny because as troubled an individual as Stockdale probably was, he was by orders of magnitude more sane than today’s GOP candidates. I mean, fucking Huh Huh Ernst? Legitimate rape? Chickens to pay the doctor? I’m not a witch?
Cruz and Paul and Rubio all have a huge gulf of the crazy to pander to if they want to challenge the establishment Jeb or Mitt.
Epithets of Gridlock! sound relatively quaint at this point.
Mike in dc
My first thought was “what states would we need to cluster together to maximize the chances of getting an authentic prog/lib Dem nominee?”
Probably would have to start with the most reliably blue states and maybe add in the most progressive primary voters where they vary.
Villago Delenda Est
@feebog: The GOP is all rectum, nowadays.
catclub
I THINK that the “later in the month” means they are also considering NOT holding it on the same day, not that they will tell ‘us’ at a new years eve party. But you never know with tiger beat on the potomac.
A big simultaneous primary favors whoever can run in all those states at once – not the random crazy of the week. Romney redux. Other have noted that in 2012 there was a crazy of the week, but did not note that then Romney would target them with all his ads and they would disappear after that. I think it was more this than the press focusing on them, but there was that, too. If I remember, Romney would outspend someone like Santorum by 8-1 and then squeak past them in the next primary and claim another win.
Corner Stone
@Mike in dc:
What states would those be? CA with DiFi, NY with Schumer, MA who recently elected Scott Brown, Patty Murray in WA (spit)?
Which ones did you have in mind?
catclub
@Mike in dc: As I note above, it is by NOT clustering primaries that a progressive could generate appeal over time. The big primary day is for established organizations.
A series of caucuses is the opposite.
Mike in dc
@Corner Stone:
In the alternative we could find the states where a high number of voters identify strongly with progressive policy positions.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Woodrowfan:
That right-wing Southerner LOST the popular vote in 2000. He “won” on a technicality.
I’m not sure what lessons we can really pull from that, other than that Sandra Day O’Connor is a real asshole who put party politics above the best interests of her country.
Seanly
@Corner Stone:
Yeah, the good Southern Baptists tend to not like the Papists (their word for Catholics, not one I use) too well.
However, I tend to agree that this helps the establishment candidates more than the crazy of the month. Doesn’t give the actual grassroots conservatives time to coalesce against a Romney. And lesser moneyed candidates might not be able to spend a shorter time frame running around 6 states.
Roger Moore
@Woodrowfan:
It didn’t quite backfire on them, but they barely managed to keep the election close enough to steal, then proceeded to steal it. It certainly was not a stunning victory for them. And that was with a candidate who was effective in hiding just how crazy he was, while candidates today will have to trumpet their crazy as loudly as possible to stand out to the Republican primary voters. Also, too, the electoral map has changed in ways that are generally favorable to the Democrats.
sparrow
I think people give WAAAY to much credit to the supposed control of the republican elite. Most of these “candidates” are really grifters, and they want that grift to keep going as long as they can milk it, which means a long primary season where they can still be “in the race” and thus raking in donations. You basically have a clown car full of crazy people who are not going to just step out of the way easily. Maybe this is an attempt to narrow the field early, but I don’t think it’s going to work.
Corner Stone
@sparrow: Newt Gingrich was really the only blatant grifter. Most of the rest really believed their own press, and thought they must be the next POTUS.
Lizzy L
Yeah, I’m figuring a Cruz/Carson ticket for the y win. Go Team Crazy! More popcorn.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Mike in dc: Name one state where that number of voters breaks 30%.
I’ll save you the time and effort. There aren’t any.
tybee
@Howard Beale IV:
the only question is which rat to fuck.
Dee Loralei
@tybee: All of them, Katie! All.Of.Them.
feebog
@Corner Stone:
Nah, I think Frothy, Bachman and Cain were all grifters. True belief that you can become POTUS and grifting are not mutually exclusive.
dp
As a Louisiana citizen, I feel qualified to say that the SEC is really good at football. Public policy? Not so much.
Howard Beale IV
@tybee: The most batshit craziest of them all.
EriktheRed
SEC?
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@EriktheRed: Southeastern Conference (football).
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
? Martin
Forrest/Calhoun 2016!
fidelio
@srv: Here in Tennessee we did have a GOP politician change his name to reflect his principles.
He ended up in the the pen for murder in the first. Ladies and Gentlemen, friends and neighbors, and children of all ages, allow me to present–Byron Low-tax Looper, who shared with John Ashcroft the distinction of being unable to win even when he ran against a dead man.
Mike E
North Carolina needs to get in on this action and declare their primary on, let’s say, Feb 29th. Heh.
notoriousJRT
“SEC” – Seccesh
ETA: it’s 1860 once more
james rogers
Sec primary? It should be the Confederate primary!
jake the antisoshul soshulist
In Kentucky a local pol changed his name from John Dean to Natty Bumpo back in tbe. Watergate days.
The Gray Adder
@Mandalay: Rick Santorum is a Roman Catholic. Not the best of qualifications in the Deep South.
The Gray Adder
@JustRuss: Remember “compassionate conservatism?”
vhh
@Corner Stone: Santorum won 2012 TN GOP primary easily.
Corner Stone
@vhh: All Hail President Santorum! Long may He reign!
billb
Scalia/Thomas 2016…. BTW out here in Oregon the Dems/Progs own the voting. We put ScandalMan Kitz back in office. If you want a progressive primary start with us!
mclaren
@Mandalay:
There, fixed that for you.
BruinKid
@fidelio: Well, a dead man that he murdered himself. That kinda made a difference there.
john fremont
@Roger Moore: Plus the fact, that the Washington press corps, the Village, spent months giving legs to every rumor about Al Gore. Although I don’t read him anymore, Bob Somersby at the Daily Howler completely shattered the idea of a “liberal media always spinning news in the Democrats favor.” Al Gore got a lot of bad press over nontreversies that election season. It was after that I began my long trajectory out of talk radio Limbaugh, Mike Savage, libertarianism, etc. Had I read more of the Daily Howler before the election I probably wouldn’t have repeated so much of the BS I heard from Limbaugh etcetera about Al Gore. One thing Rush constantly said was even the mainstream liberal press is reporting these things about Gore.Bush didn’t win the election, Gore got handicapped by the press and the Supreme Court got Bush in on a technicality.
rikyrah
@Tommy:
Bush 41 was a one term loser. DUBYA was such a disaster that the country elected a Black man for President. And yet your mother would vote for ANOTHER BUSH?!?!!!
WHAT DA PHUQ?