Despite complaining about the mainstream media and its liberal bias, Republican leaders have allowed the national media to drive our nominating process.
We’ve literally outsourced a large part of our nominating process to journalists and the large media companies they work for.
I find that fascinating. Disturbing, but fascinating.
Erick Erickson has talked about this in the past and made an effort to have a Republican led discussion.
In this cycle it has been the national debates that have largely driven the process. Consider Gov. Perry’s ride down the polls and Newt Gingrich’s ride up. The momentum is clearly tied to their debate performances.
In nearly every debate, large media companies have decided who could participate and who could not. They’ve waited until the last possible moment, reviewed polling data from a variety of angles, and then retroactively selected a system to include those they wanted to include and exclude the rest.
Only once did they make a mistake and accidentally let former Gov. Gary Johnson into one of the debates.
Ironically, the media is being very honest and upfront about the process. Debate sponsors are being fairly frank about the retroactive data-mining process they are using to produce the list of “acceptable candidates.”
The problem is that the Republican Party is allowing it. You might think that it is foolish to allow liberal journalists to quiz our potential nominees and then attempt to get them sniping at each other. And you would be right, but that’s a topic for another article.
The larger problem is that the Republican Party is allowing the media to select the list of candidates that our caucus and early primary state voters can select from.
The unintended, though clearly foreseeable consequences could be significant.
After months of being shut out of debates, Gov. Buddy Roemer is now openly seeking the nomination of the Americans Elect ticket.
You may not agree with all of Buddy Roemer’s positions. Most of us don’t agree with everything ANY of the candidates say.
You may think that limiting campaign contributions to $100 is a strategic error. And it probably is.
Nevertheless, Buddy Roemer is a former four-term Congressman, a former Governor and a very successful businessman. Gov. Roemer has a message and he has earned the opportunity to present it to the American people and especially to Republican voters.
According to his bio:
Governor Roemer served four terms in the United States Congress from 1981 – 1988 as a conservative Democrat who often broke ranks with his party to vote with President Reagan, and was Louisiana Governor from 1988-1992 as both a Democrat and Republican.
Since leaving public office, Governor Roemer has been involved in a number of business ventures. Most recently, he served as the founder, CEO, and President of Business First Bank, a small business community bank with approximately $650 million in assets that took no bailout money from the federal government.
Republicans famously clamor for candidates with high-level business experience. Yet we very rarely see one with such significant experience both inside of and outside of government.
Governor Roemer is far down in the polls – primarily because he wasn’t allowed into the first few debates and because he stubbornly refuses to take more than $100 per person in campaign contributions.
The last thing we need is an intelligent and charismatic candidate, with a proven record of winning elections and building multimillion dollar companies, running against the Republican nominee.
And if that happens, we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves.
Neil Stevens
Jeff Emanuel
Moe Lane
Dan Spencer
Steve Maley
Dan McLaughlin
