Eye on Washington: Winner Takes All

Two weeks, and two primaries later, we’ve seen dynamics of the GOP nomination race violently flip flop from Romney, to Gingrich and back, getting more polarised as the campaign progresses.

Gingrich took a decisive lead with South Carolina, returning four times the slice of the pie he achieved in New Hampshire. This week Romney reversed that with a win in Florida. What is clear is that this is fast becoming a two horse race. Both Sanctorum and Paul have been left to fend in a second division. This is ultimately good for the Republican

Party in that the debate will help establish a clear leadership candidate.

Returning briefly to my previous entry, in South Carolina, the predicted Colbert protest vote through campaign surrogate Herman Cain, registered only 1.1%, with 6,326 votes. This was enough to be classified in the results, which is an achievement in itself. After the suspense of the build up to the vote, Colbert’s fictional exploratory committee was hastily dismantled after accomplishing its goal to raise awareness of the bizarre role of the Super PACs.

Florida also gave some insight to the politics within the Republican party itself. The state party voted to pull their primary forward, aiming to benefit from an early influence in the race. The idea was to bank more revenue from advertising, with the hunch that this race was going to come down to momentum of the candidates rather than counting individual votes at the national convention. The state paid a price with this rebellion to party line, with the national party wiping out half of the states delegates at the national convention. This is just short of the total number of delegates of Iowa and South Carolina combined. What would you think if you were an ordinary Republican from the sunshine state?

This penalty resulted – by state party regulation – to Florida keeping a winner-takes-all delegate allocation, which again broke national party rules regarded holding winner-takes-all prior to April 1. In response, all the national party could muster is to give the Florida delegates, inconvenient hotels, and the worse seats at come the national convention – which will be held in Florida. I kid you not. Gingrich announced he is appealing this decision, but it’s not the hotel or the seats he cares about.

I am starting to see faint comparisons with the last Labour leadership election. Here, as in then there are two leading candidates, one has popularity with core grass roots, while other is criticised to be too far towards the centre, but is seen by many as more electable chief executive. It will be interesting to see which way they will choose.

Alex Adranghi is a member of the Young Fabians.