The Virginia GOP Civil War Over Conventions Continues

the 2013 Extremist Slate Nominated via Convention

With another state wide convention having produced a trifecta of losing statewide candidates, one would think that other than the Christofascists at The Family Foundation and the worse knuckle draggers of the Tea Party, everyone in the Republican Party of Virginia would want to see conventions panned in favor of primaries.  But that, of course would entail common sense and a loosening of control by the far right.  A column in Bearing Drift makes an argument against banning conventions.  Here are excerpts:

I hate conventions.  I really do.  I have argued against them for six years now, ever since I attended my first convention in 2008 and watched incredulously as Jeff Frederick was elected RPV Chair and Jim Gilmore barely defeated Sideshow Bob Marshall for the U.S. Senate nomination.

So you would think that when Senator Frank Wagner (R-VA Beach) introduced SB 507 and a companion House Bill, HB 194 was introduced in the House by Delegate Scott Taylor (R-VA Beach), to effectively ban conventions (along with every other non-primary form of nomination process), I would be supportive.  I’m not. These are bad bills.

While I hope that RPV’s State Central Committee never again chooses a convention as the method of nominating our statewide candidates, and I hope that local committee chairs opt for primaries as well, these two bills take the argument a bridge too far.  Not only do they bar conventions, they also bar any form of caucus, firehouse primary or mass meeting.

While I have long argued that political parties are quasi-public entities, where anyone of like mind may join and participate, they are not fully public entities.  They have First Amendment rights to free association, and should be entitled to choose their method of nominating candidates to run under their banner.  While the General Assembly is well within their rights to regulate the nominating processes of the political parties to ensure that they comply with the law – for example, barring racial discrimination or barring the use of poll taxes – mandating or requiring the parties use a specific form, regardless of the merit of the reason, is taking their role too far.  These bills represent an unnecessary governmental interference into the operations of the political parties.

Thus, these bills, while acknowledging that conventions are inherently discriminatory – not just against members of the armed services, but against whole swaths of the electorate who may want to participate in their party’s nominating processes but can’t participate in a convention – as written are far broader than just banning conventions.  

At the same time, some of the attacks on Senator Wagner, Delegate Taylor, and others go too far.  It’s important for my Tea Party and libertarian friends to recognize that these bills aren’t “establishment Republican” bills designed to harm their chances of securing nominees.  If you look at Senator Wagner’s bill, he has a bipartisan roster of co-patrons, including Democratic Senators Barker, Favola and Puller and Democratic Delegates Morrissey and Surovell.  This makes sense if you look at their districts, all of which have heavy uniformed military presence.  And on the Republican side, you’ve got folks like Scott Lingamfelter – no moderate RINO – who is the long time and leading champion of active duty military and veterans in the General Assembly.

At the end of the day, these bills go too far.  While I don’t ever want to have to spend another Saturday afternoon waiting on results from yet another nominating convention, the General Assembly shouldn’t be barring these processes.  It should be the choice of the parties, not the legislature.

While I agree with the argument that conventions are exclusionary, in order to hasten the death of the Virginia GOP in its current form, I hope the bills are defeated.  Let's have more extremist nutcases as the GOP standard bearers. :)