Friday, April 6, 2012

Texas “Winner Take All” is NOT about Romney or Santorum. It is about TEXAS


Texas MUST go to Winner Take All in order to be relevant in this Presidential Election. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain! This has nothing to do with Santorum or Romney. It is about TEXAS. Also, the RNC and DOJ cannot stop us or scare us!

I am a Santorum supporter and I am a Texas GOP SREC member in favor of an Emergency Meeting to go to Winner Take All, but it is very important to make it clear that I have been for winner take all WELL BEFORE I was a Santorum supporter. In fact, I was never in agreement with Texas being forced by the RNC last year to change from to Winner Take All to proportional. My past blog articles serve as proof that winner take all has never been about Santorum for me because I have been for Winner Take All well before I supported Santorum. My support for winner take all has always been about giving Texas a voice and making us relevant. We are the biggest Republican State in the nation and we are always overlooked! Could winner take all for Texas benefit Santorum? Sure it could. That is why the Santorum campaign is really getting on board with this and it is exciting his base. But it could also benefit Romney if he comes here and campaigns hard because with his money and network he could win Texas and get all of our delegates under winner take all. Winner take all is not about Santorum or Romney. It is about giving Texas a voice and getting candidates to recognize Texas and campaign here and have debates here.

Texas GOP SREC Members are for Winner Take All to Make Texas Relevant, Not to Help Santorum or Hurt Romney

The media is making it look like the push for winner take all is about trying to help Santorum. The truth is that Santorum supporters are not the only SREC members in favor of winner take all. In fact, the entire SREC (including Romney supporters) voted to last month to pass the resolution warning Romney to come to our debate. That is proof that this is not about Romney or Santorum. We are just tired of being ignored. This is about making Texas relevant instead of having candidates ignore us every election. A national debate can give Texas a place in the national race and it is insulting for the frontrunner Romney to reject coming to our Nationally Televised Texas Presidential Debate. Winner take all will make Texas relevant on a national level because all the candidates will want to come to TX to compete for our 155 delegates. Winner take all will shake things up and keep the race alive until Texas votes. Santorum will compete hard in Texas because he wants to keep Romney from getting 1144 delegates and force a brokered convention. Romney will want to come to Texas and campaign here to try to get our 155 delegates to help secure his bid for the nomination. This is not about Santorum or Romney. This is about Texas. Considering all the national attention we have stirred up, I think it is safe to say that it is already working!

The DOJ and RNC will not Hurt or Stop Us from going Winner Take All

In February, I proposed going back to Winner Take All but the SREC voted against it because we did not have an election date set in stone yet and there was fear that the DOJ would push our election day back even more if we tried to go back to Winner Take All. Now that our election date is set in stone, the DOJ does not worry us anymore. If we go to Winner Take All now then what do we have to fear from the DOJ? The DOJ cannot push back our election. The only thing that the DOJ can do is to say no and try to get an injunction to stop us from going to Winner Take All. What do we have to lose? I do not think the DOJ will reject it anyways because if they do reject us then that just sets us up to be able to sue them because it is CLEARLY unconstitutional to tell Texas that we cannot be Winner Take All, but at the same time they allow other states to be Winner Take All.

As far as the RNC goes, we are not worried about them either. We followed their rules and went to proportional when our election was before April. Now that our election is after April, due to liberals and a federal court unfairly pushing our election back, we should be allowed to be Winner Take All like everyone else. The RNC has no authority to punish us anyways. Only the national convention can do that. The RNC spokesman try to say that we will for sure be punished, but in reality, they cannot punish us and the only way we can be punished is if someone at the national convention objects to what we did and then the entire body would vote. I do not believe that the majority of the national convention delegates would vote to penalize Texas for going Winner Take All because any state with an April or later Primary is allowed to be Winner Take All.

Proportional is not More Fair vs. Winner Take All

If you run for city council with 2 other people do you split up the city council seat based on the percentage of the votes you get? NO. The person who gets the most votes wins the city council seat. The same thing with the Presidential race, there is no proportional “popular vote” in the Presidential race. If a candidate wins a state in the November General Election then they get all of the Electoral College delegates from that state. The same thing should apply to the Republican Nomination. The Republican candidate who wins Texas should be the candidate that the State of Texas gets behind. Otherwise we might as well throw states rights out the window and just go to a nation-wide popular vote (proportional).

We Have Nothing to Lose But Everything to Gain! Let’s go Winner Take All!

Ultimately, we have nothing to lose but everything to gain. We are completely irrelevant now as it is so no threats of penalties can make us any more irrelevant than we already are. On the other hand, we have everything to gain by taking a shot at changing our rules and possibly putting Texas in the spotlight and making us a must win state that candidates will not want to ignore. Win or lose, we should stand up for Texas and fight back against us slipping off into not ever being relevant. Our message to America should be 'Don't Mess With Texas' the race is not over, bring it on!

5 comments:

  1. "If you run for city council with 2 other people
     do you split up the city council seat based on
     the percentage of the votes you get? NO. The
     person who gets the most votes wins the city
     council seat."

    This analogy falls flat. The person who gets the most votes wins the SEAT (in a district council or one with places); however that's singular - SEAT, not SEATS. We're awarding DELEGATES, which is plural.

    In a city council where two slates are running against each other (which is much more analogous to caucii with slates of delegates), and everyone gets to cast 3 votes for 3 seats (but is free to under-vote), the seats go to the top-3 vote-getters, and slate-breaking and under-voting can cause all the seats not to go to one slate.

    You mention the legality of your proposed change, but you don't mention the ETHICS of it. Instead you just induce collectivism - we should vote as a Texas bloc. That's not commensurate with the individualism of Republicanism. Lets shift to the ethics.

    (1) What about the unethical nature of changing rules in the middle of the game. The campaigns of the four Presidential candidates planned their campaigns with the rules in mind, and you're proposing to change them in the middle of the game, when you know (in an un-Rawlsian fashion) that the change is not neutral, but will bias in favor of some candidates. That's wrong.

    (2) You're petitioning SREC for an emergency meeting when there is no "emergency". You're to be a caretaker organization. That's wrong.

    (3) If Mitt got 38% and Paul got 15%, how are Republicans enfranchised by awarding all the delegates to Santorum, who takes only a plurality? You also distort incentives - you set up a scenario where Paul & Newt supporters must choose between voting their conscious or voting strategically if they wish to have any meaningful impact, since their vote will not "transfer" to their 2nd preference.

    If you require a majority for Winner-Take-All to activate (some rules do), and a candidate does win a majority, you're still inserting the perverse voting incentives mentioned above. By what gain is this trade-offset? Oh, I forgot, "Texas has a bigger voice" ...."Don't mess with Texas", and more bluster like that." There is no unit rule like the Democratic Party often uses, so we do not vote as a block. If there were a second-ballot via an open-convention, the "Texas Delegation" would not be asked to vote "as Texas", but the delegates, then unbound, would vote their conscious as individuals. If the delegates are to have individual representation, why shouldn't those of us the delegates are to represent?

    Why is this disenfranchisement of the minority opinion of the party considered acceptable.

    This is a raw deal, and I will be contacting my Senate District SREC members and asking them to oppose this measure so we can send a delegation that fairly represents all Texas Republicans, rather than excluding many and acting arbitrarily and capriciously to change mid-stream to advantage the Santorum campaign ...and that is exactly the point of this change!

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  2. As a County Executive Committee member, I am completely opposed to winner take all. I'm getting to the point where I am so disappointed in my party that I seriously considering leaving it.

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  3. This maneuver really does seem elitist and wants to cater to the likes of Romney. Even reading this article it seems you favor more him than paul. You better hope you don't get ousted out as chairman during state convention. Oh and grassroot republicans WOULD NOT like winner take all!

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  4. you do realize that Texas has always been winner take all. It is what the grassroots wanted and have repeatedly voted for. that is not elitism. That is Texas having a say. The old winner take all was actually better than proportional because it was winner take all by congressional district. the winner of each congressional district got the delegates from that congressional district. It was winner take all but it gave each local congressional districts a voice. That is fair and what the Republicans in Texas voted to have at the past state conventions before the RNC forced Texas to change. Bellow is not an elitist. He is a grassroots republican who wants Texas to have a say by not getting pushed around by the RNC

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