RNC reminds reporters: No delegates to be awarded tomorrow

[brooklynite]

Washington Post:

Eagerly awaiting the results of tomorrow’s GOP nominating contests in Missouri, Colorado and Minnesota?

Not so fast.

On the eve of the trio of races, the Republican National Committee sent out a memo reminding reporters that no delegates actually will be awarded in Tuesday’s presidential caucuses in Minnesota and Colorado or in Missouri’s nonbinding presidential primary.

Colorado is a non-binding precinct caucus. Their 36 delegates will be chosen at district conventions held between March 31 – April 13, 2012, and at the state convention on April 14, 2012.
Minnesota is a non-binding precinct caucus. Their 40 delegates will be chosen at district conventions held between April 14 – 21, 2012, and at a state convention on May 5, 2012. Delegates are not bound unless the state convention passes a resolution to bind the delegates.
Missouri will hold a primary tomorrow that is not recognized as being a part of any delegate allocation or selection process.
A precinct caucus will be held on 3/17/2012 to begin the process of choosing their 52 delegates which will be chosen at district conventions on April 21, 2012, and a state convention on June 2, 2012. Candidates for delegate must state a presidential preference at the time of nomination and will be bound to support that candidate for one ballot at the national convention.

Announcing this the day before voting occurs? I wonder if the RNC wants to keep turnout low...

[Renew Deal]

1. Are they expecting Romney to have a bad day?

[Tx4obama]

2. Polls are showing Santorum beating Mitt in Missouri and Minnesota.

See subject line here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/101445850

[Firebrand Gary]

3. The GOP base will go nuts if Santorum wins!

So as I understand it, these caucuses have "non-binding" delegates? So essentially, are they saying that delegates could be awarded to someone other than who actually won these caucuses? Hmm

[Tx4obama]

4. That's how it was with a lot of the democratic delegates too in 2008

even though the states sent the so many delegates that said they would vote for Obama and so many that said they'd vote for Clinton to the National Convention I believe that all of them of them could have gone ahead and voted differently once they were at the National Convention.

I don't see why the news story even came out since many delegates that are selected during the primary process are 'non-binding' delegates.

I'm a bit confused here ...

[Renew Deal]

6. Because when Romney loses, they want to cut the embarrassment.

That's why.

[karynnj]

8. This actually seems different

In 2008, the delegates were bound to vote as they stood on the first round - unless the candidate they were for freed them. Hillary did free her delegates.

Here, it looks as though there is no direct connection between winning the contests today and being assigned delegates. However, Iowa was like this too for this year's Republicans, but there was no pre Iowa caucus statement that it didn't count. Not to mention, little NH was a KEY test - even though it was where Romney had a home and he was the governor of a neighboring state. There seems a strong correlation to whether a state is deemed important and how well Romney is doing. (Minnesota has 10 electors, Missouri has 11, and Colorado has 9. Nevada, which somehow was important has 5 - so it is not how big they are.)

[karynnj]

9. Unless the winner has dropped out by the April conferences, I suspect that it would be

not a wise move to vote against the way the people did. However, for Santorum to still be running in April, he would have had to become a competitive candidate. The question is if he wins all three of these states, it would seem like it should give him momentum. If in addition, Gingrich implodes, the Republican nomination could get confused again. (I don't see the enormously big ego of Gingrich letting him drop out.)

In 2008, after SuperTuesday ended in close to a tie between Obama and Clinton, there was a huge amount of behind the scenes comments that were intentionally leaked that suggested that a majority of the superdelegates could vote for the runner up because she would be a stronger candidate. Almost immediately, Obama surrogates argued that this was very unlikely to happen and shouldn't happen. That was met by a new metric that NEVER before was cited - the "national popular vote" - which was the "votes" aggregated over all the states - effectively downweighting the caucus states as their participation rate is lower. This was to give a justification to the superdelegates disproportionately picking Clinton - yet even with that as a possible justification having the winner be anyone other than the one who won was very unpopular.

(Note - the Obama surrogates were NOT be altruistic or idealistic. If Obama failed to get most of the regular delegates, there were not the same dynamics to push him getting the nomination anyway. There very likely would have been a Clinton/Obama ticket.)

[Renew Deal]

5. That would be a pretty bad day for Romney

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

10. Newt is right! Mittens WILL have a bad day. He'll do well in CO, but not in MN.

So the RNC is doing damage control so as not to embarass their standard bearer.

[Renew Deal]

11. Colorado has Mormons

It seems like Romney's demo is New Englanders, rich people, and mormons. Conservatives and pretty much everyone else support someone else.

[karynnj]

7. I suspect they want to downplay any non-Romney wins

Santorum, believe it or not, has polled ahead in Missouri and Minnesota.

It seems very nondemocratic that the people do not have a say in who their state backs in Tampa.

[MaineDem]

12. RNC Rules say states that go before March (other than the first 4) will lose delegates

So they can't "officially" award delegates at this point. Rules also say winner-take-all can't take place before that date either. That's why Newt is fighting for allocation in FL.