South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott has formally filed the paperwork to enter a presidential nominating contest that, by some measures, looks a lot like previous ones. That is, there’s an obvious leader in the polls whom everyone knows about, and challenges from lesser-known rivals. The leading candidate has vulnerabilities that competitors are trying to exploit, and they’ve been doing the usual candidate things like visiting Iowa and New Hampshire and preparing for the candidate debates that will start this summer.
The informal rules that have governed these contests in the past have frayed.
But the informal rules that have governed these contests in the past have frayed, leading to far greater unpredictability in just how this competition will unfold.
In 2016, Donald Trump skeptics sought refuge in an informal set of rules that had emerged in response to the primary changes of the 1970s. Those changes had led to a dramatic increase in the number and importance of primary elections and caucuses. As a result, party voters (rather than party leaders) now seemed to be in control of nominations. But after the 1970s revisions, party elites found other ways of getting the sorts of candidates they wanted by coordinating with one another and steering money and endorsements toward the candidates they thought were reliable and electable, and away from riskier ones.
The procedure that defined presidential nominations in the following decades was a complicated one, with states jockeying for influence, the formal rules of delegate selection still in play and party leaders often adjusting the system in subtle ways.
But Trump’s 2016 candidacy could not be contained by those rules. And this has brought new uncertainty into the nominating process.
Trump’s decades-long fame, his ability to attract media attention and his stance on certain issues (particularly immigration) roused the Republican base, and the informal process in place had little recourse to stop it. In 2020,…
Read the full article here