WASHINGTON — “If Reince Priebus from Kenosha, Wisconsin, is the Republican ‘establishment,’ God help us,” says the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus. His physical presence is almost as unprepossessing as James Madison’s was. But with meticulous — Madisonian, actually — subtlety, he is working to ameliorate a difficulty that has existed for two centuries and in 2012 wounded the GOP.
The Constitution’s Framers considered the presidential candidate selection process so important they made it one of the four national institutions they created. Three were Congress, the Supreme Court and the presidency. The fourth was the presidential selection system based on the Electoral College, under which the nomination of candidates and the election of the president occurred simultaneously.
Since the emergence of parties in the 1790s, nominees have been selected by the parties’ congressional caucuses, next by national conventions controlled by the parties’ organizations, then by conventions leavened by popular choice (state primaries and caucuses). Finally, because Hubert Humphrey won the 1968 Democratic nomination without entering any primaries, the selection of nominees has been entirely by popular choice since 1972.
Priebus’ perilous, and probably thankless, task is to rally a fraying party behind rules that will solve two entangled problems — the delegate selection calendar and the number of candidate debates. The delegate selection process needs to be long enough to test the candidates’ mettle but not so protracted that it leaves the winner politically battered and financially depleted.
