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National Popular Vote continues to fund junkets for Oklahoma legislators
You'd think they'd give up, at long last, but advocates of the National Popular Vote compact continue to lobby Oklahoma legislators to agree to enslave our electoral vote to that of higher-population states on the coasts. Jamison Faught, the Muskogee Politico, recently dug through the legislators' financial disclosure statements for...
2019 OKGOP convention thoughts
UPDATE: Generally a good outcome. David McLain was elected chairman. Former State Rep. Mike Turner was elected vice chairman. All of the rule changes were thrown out because outgoing state chairman Pam Pollard failed to provide the proposals to delegates by the 10-day deadline. Platform was on the agenda and...
What is the Republican Party?
Tom Nichols, a prominent "Never Trumper," and author of The Death of Expertise, has written an op-ed for The Atlantic to explain why he's leaving the Republican Party. It's hard to take Mr. Expert seriously when he uses the "GOP" as the subject of a sentence, as an entity with...
2016 Oklahoma Republican State Convention
A subdued mood prevailed Saturday as 857 delegates convened at FirstMoore Baptist Church for the 2016 Oklahoma Republican Convention. (The 2012 convention drew approximately 1,400 delegates.) The state convention in a presidential year has a national focus, electing two members of the Republican National Committee, electing 25 at-large delegates and...
RNC party elite? Hardly.
Yesterday, I saw a Politico story with this headline: GOP rivals humble themselves before the party's elite Cruz, Kasich and Trump team makes pitches as delegates dangle their support. Knowing the three people who represent Oklahoma on the RNC, I can't accept the term "party elite." Oklahoma GOP chairman Pam...
Cruz sweeps Colorado, fair and square
Donald J. Trump â€@realDonaldTrump How is it possible that the people of the great State of Colorado never got to vote in the Republican Primary? Great anger - totally unfair! 7:28 PM - 10 Apr 2016 Michael Bates †@BatesLine @realDonaldTrump Is it unfair to good kicking teams that...
Ted Cruz's 51% path to first-ballot nomination
UPDATED: Added a new tab to the spreadsheet to game out an alternative scenario: Cruz 45, Trump 40, Kasich 15 in remaining contests. Despite the near-sweep last night for Donald Trump, Ted Cruz still has a plausible path to arriving at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland with enough...
National Popular Vote before Oklahoma House committee Wednesday
The attempt to enlist Oklahoma in the National Popular Vote agreement, a left-wing attempt to subvert the constitutional method for electing the president, is back. In 2014, NPV legislation was rushed through the State Senate. Legislators were invited to junkets in tropical locations and other favorite vacation spots to discuss...
RNC 2012 rules fight: What happened, why it matters
The last three evenings were occupied with an election night watch party (disappointing results, but some good conversation late into the night that only confirmed my conviction that Oklahoma is much the poorer that someone as principled, intelligent, and sincere as Shane Saunders won't be serving in the state legislature...
Mitt Romney's RNC power grab
I hate to have to miss the Republican National Convention this year, but it's especially tough to miss the convention's Rules Committee proceedings the week before the convention. I was one of a handful of reporters and bloggers covering the 2004 and 2008 Rules Committee proceedings, and I suspect I...
The anthropomorphization of the GOP
This post has been percolating in my brain for a couple of months, and the topic for even longer, but other business has prevented its completion until now. As I read conservative blogs, I see a great deal of understandable frustration with different aspects of Republican Party politics: The National...
Oklahoma Republican delegate allocation methodology
In the wake of the Michigan Republican presidential primary, in which Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney won an equal number of congressional districts, each worth two delegates, there was a dispute over whether the two at-large delegates should be divided between Romney and Santorum (since no candidate received a majority...
Newt's Florida challenge and the GOP's sloppy rules
Newt Gingrich is challenging the plurality-takes-all allocation of Florida's 50 delegates to the Republican National Convention. Mitt Romney finished first in the January 31st primary with 46% of the vote, which means, according to rules adopted by the Florida state party rules, Romney gets all 50. Republicans in Florida and...
Republican cumulative delegates by date
Florida turned out as expected, but as I wrote right after South Carolina, there's no need for anyone of the remaining candidates to head for the exits. Mitt Romney's campaign is restarting the inevitability bandwagon. Pundits are falling over each other to be the first to declare that it's all...
Iowa caucuses: How Ron Paul can "win" and lose in the same night
Several recent poll results suggest that Texas Congressman Ron Paul could be in for a good result this coming Tuesday, the night that Iowa voters gather for Republican precinct caucuses, the first step in a series of conventions that will lead to the selection of delegates and alternates to...
<em>Sun</em> sets
Amongst all the other sad news is this: The New York Sun will cease publication today after nearly seven years of publication. The revived Sun (the original version ceased publication in 1950) was known for a thoughtful, conservative editorial bent, thorough reporting on local government, and lively writing on arts...
PLANiTULSA prep, the RNC, and St. Paul's epistle to the Tulsans
In addition to all the writing I did for BatesLine during the Republican National Convention, I managed to turn out three pieces for this week's issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly: The cover story about the upcoming PLANiTULSA citywide planning workshops. The folks at the City of Tulsa Planning Department and...
Rules committee: A summary
Friday's Republican National Convention rules committee meeting heralded major changes in the way Republicans will select a presidential nominee in years to come, although exactly what those changes may be are yet to be determined. The primary process was one of several thorny issues debated in a six-hour meeting by...
Rules committee: A Republican commission on the primary/caucus process
UPDATING this post continually. A proposal has been brought to amend Rule 10. It would set up a commission that would report back to the RNC at some later date, and then the RNC would have to approve any changes proposed by a 2/3rds vote. Morton Blackwell is speaking in...
Rules committee: Primary calendar changes
Oklahoma GOP chairman Gary Jones along with Mr. Ryder of Tennessee (didn't catch his first name) succeeded, by a vote of 67-31, in passing an amendment to a change to the primary calendar proposed by the Republican National Committee. The RNC proposal would have allowed only New Hampshire and South...
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