Hillyer: GOP May Rue Reince's Rules

"The Republican National Committee, falling back on its default option of centralizing power while trampling over grassroots activists, may have made a terrible mistake last week in condensing its presidential-nominating process," writes Quin Hillyer, "with a plan to schedule the convention for no later than July 18, rather than late August, as in 2012."

Front-running candidates with early access to big money will benefit, as will the entrenched consultants who bleed the party dry. Initial might, rather than staying power, will determine the victor, and the party could get stuck with a candidate whose flaws become manifest only after it’s too late for voters to wrest the nomination from his grasp.

In pushing the changes, RNC chairman Reince Priebus is making the mistake of re-litigating the last election, rather than learning from a broader sweep of electoral history. And that’s giving Priebus the benefit of the doubt for his motives. (A less charitable take would be that Priebus and the RNC insiders value their control of the party more than they prize the voters’ will.) [snip]

Conservatives worried about these changes can point to history. If these rules had been in effect in 1976, for instance, Ronald Reagan’s challenge to sitting president Gerald Ford — and perhaps his presidential career — would have died aborning, and the Republican party itself might never have achieved its greatest triumphs. [snip]

Virginia National Committeeman Morton Blackwell, a party-rules expert for more than 40 years and a legendary steward of the conservative movement, put it this way: “We need an adequate amount of time in order for presidential candidates to be tested.” The lesser-known candidates merit more time to make their case.

In an open letter to Preibus, Blackwell laid out further the risk of having too little time: “Front-loading increases the possibility that someone would win our nomination because of some short-term fluke.” In other words, somebody might nail down the nomination before being fully vetted, thus turning a flash in the pan into the party’s standard-bearer even though later developments could make him an almost sure loser in the fall.

There's still time for the Republican National Committee to reverse the primary-process mistake it made last week...