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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 November 2022
The Democratic party's quadrennial exercises in reform of the delegate selection process have caused political scientists and journalists to focus their attention on the Democratic party and to ignore the character and impact of the Republican rules. While the Democrats have been going through major revisions of their rules every four years since the disastrous 1968 convention, the Republicans have followed a quite different strategy. They have sought to maintain the basic procedures and party structure which had evolved prior to the era of the McGovern-Fraser Commission, and they have directed their efforts toward supporting federal, state, and local candidates and party organizations.
1 Ranney, Austin and Kendall, Willmoore, Democracy in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1956), p. 292).Google Scholar
2 As for 1984, the chairman of the Republican National Committee's Rules Committee, Texas National Committeeman Ernie Angelo, has reported that his committee will not recommend any significant changes in the delegate selection process to the 1984 national convention. As a result of the Supreme Court's ruling in Democratic Party v. Wisconsin, the Rules Committee has attempted to clarify the hierarchy of applicable delegate selection rules. Under the proposed revision of Rule 33(a)(1), it is made clear that Republican national party rules have preeminence insofar as they choose to assert that preeminence. Applicable state laws are secondary. This provision validates state primaries and other statutory law, but only insofar as they comply with national party rules. State party rules apply in the absence of state law, but are subordinate to applicable national party rules. Other proposed changes were of less significance, and, even if the new revisions are approved by the 1984 national convention, they will not take effect until 1988.
3 Austin Ranney has observed that the Democratic rules changes “constitutes the first increase in the power of a party's national organs since the heyday of presidential nominations by congressional caucuses from 1800 to 1824.” “The Political Parties: Reform and Decline,” in King, Anthony (editor), The New American Political System (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1978), p. 226.Google Scholar See also Ceaser, James W., Presidential Selection (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 288–289.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 Ranney, Austin, The Federalization of Presidential Primaries (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1978), p. 3.Google Scholar See also Polsby, Nelson W., Consequences of Party Reform (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 53–64.Google Scholar
5 For a discussion of the impact of the national Republican party on the 1982 elections, see Sabato, Larry, “Parties, PACs and Independent Group,” in Mann, Thomas E. and Ornstein, Norman J. (eds.), The American Elections of 1982 (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1983), pp. 73–82.Google Scholar
