so in the interests of intellectual completeness: Romney’s support of McCain and release of delegates to vote for McCain pretty much puts the republican issue to bed (no matter what the conservative wing may prefer).

The democratic challenge is, however, still on the table. Wisconsin, Ohio, and Texas may perchance give us a glimpse for how this will resolve.

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perhaps because certain portions of the Republican leadership have been expressing concern over McCain’s nomination.

And we can say with reasonable certainty that the Republican leadership wants to win in November, so indeed we can conclude that the Republican leadershp wants something.

And given the increasing number of grass roots level comments about denying McCain the nomination, which would appear to require active involvement of the Republican leadership, my suggestion is far more plausible than the complaint from conservatives that the Democratic nomineee might be chosen undemocratically.

If one is going to make an argumrent about one party, intellectual honesty should also drive you to consider the argument in the context of both parties.

I don’t seem to see the conservatives comments in this blog demonstrating this intellectual honesty.

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“And given that Huckabee can’t win the nominaton directly and yet is still in the race, it provides a starting point for suggesting that the Republican leadership wants an undemocratic over ride of the Republican primary electoral results.”

How do you conclude that it is the “Republican Leadership” wanting anything? They aren’t forcing Huckabee to continue on. Nor can they force him to withdraw. Right now, this ball is in Huckabee’s court.

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got it. I will run this down.

Actually if you want to be very precise, as I understand it, no delegate can be forced to honor their pledge (much like in the electoral college). Practically, however, if they want to be given any credence in the future ….

It is the old saw: let it be a fair election and let it be a land slide (then all these fussy details don’t matter ).

Thanks!

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The non-elected/non-super-delegate delegates are nominally allocated to the candidates (on a proportionate basis) but they aren’t really bound to them in any sense. Like much else in these matters, they are rather fuzzy (and my conversations with the party officials don’t seem to clarify them much – the fuzziness seems to be viewed as more of a feature than a bug).

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so lets look closely at Illinois to examine your point.

CNN records:

Open primary
185 total delegates*
153 tied to February 5 primary, 32 superdelegates

So the total delegate count matches your numbers (185) and you would seem to be challenging the pledged vs. unpledged delegates.

I went to:

Real Clear Politics Delegate Data

and they give the Democratic primary data for pledged delegates as:

Illinois 02/05 153/total 104/Obama 49/Clinton

This seems to match the CNN data of 153 pledged delegates.

So I am unsure of where you are getting your data.

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my observations on your position revolve around the clearly undemocratic process which would be involved if the Republican leadership over rode the primary voters. Further, you believe that such a challenge in the Republican paty would not result in significant disruption to the Republicans? You believe that McCain would sit back and accept it? You would seem to have an interesting perspective on McCain!

And given that Huckabee can’t win the nominaton directly and yet is still in the race, it provides a starting point for suggesting that the Republican leadership wants an undemocratic over ride of the Republican primary electoral results.

As I have noted, it looks like Obama has a reasonable chance of pulling off a clean win, even without superdelegates.

You are right, if Clinton (or Obama) were to over ride the primary voters, there would be a major political sturggle, just like there would be in the Republican party were this to occur.

Right now, as exmplefied in your post, I suggest that this scenario is much more likely in the Republican party than the Democratic party, and I suggest it will not be a pretty sight.

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FOr example, it seems to say that the GOP side is either winner-take-all or proportional. There is a 3rd option (direct election of delegates that entirely disregards the ‘popular vote’ portion of the primary – Illinois happens to be one of these 3rd option states).

On the Democrat side, the site doesn’t address the non-superdelegate/non-elected delegates (again, using Illinois as an example – it has 185 delegates, 100 pledged ones elected from the Congressional districts, 27 ’superdelegates’ and the 58 other non-elected/non-pledged delegates in a 3rd category that CNN doesn’t account for).

The media people have a very poor grasp of the delegate process.

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I disagree with Llama on a fairly regular basis, so I don’t see any “irony” in stating a different opinion today.

What’s wrong with saying that I personally would rather see the more conservative man win, and that I suspect most Republicans would too? I think it’s highly unlikely we’ll have any result but a McCain win, but I don’t think that expresses the will of the Republicans as a whole. For one thing, there were many legitimate more or less conservative Republicans in the race opposed to just one “moderate.” The others split the vote–partly because none of them was actually conservative enough to form a consensus of support. But I didn’t say it would be wonderful to have the election decided by superdelegates, just that I’m willing to see it happen if it means we aren’t stuck with McCain. And that I don’t think it would be undercutting the “will of the people” if that were to happen.

On the Democratic side, it has been a two-person race the whole way. If Obama were to win the primary delegates, and then lose based on some maneuvering by Clinton, you can bet there will be chaos–lawsuits, race riots, you name it. Part of the difference is simply that people rather expect dirty politics from the Clintons. Nobody would see it as party people voting in an otherwise tied vote; people would see it as the Clintons once again getting something because they’re Clintons. And black people would see it as racially motivated. (A huge percentage of black people in the country think that O.J. was framed. Do you really think they wouldn’t see Obama’s loss in some hitherto-unseen political maneuver as unacceptably dirty politics?)

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but you do see the irony in your post when you compare it to llama’s comments in post 22?

The difference appears to be that you are willing to accept leadership interference in the Republican process but you perceive it is “chaos” for leadership to interfere in the Democratic process.

And when I compare this to llama’s comments on the undemocratic nature of the Democratic superdelgates …

I am always delighted to see such moral and ideological consistency among conservatives.

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