God bless 'em. GOP state party chairs really are trying to put things in the best light,
reports Politico.
“I’ve never seen this number of candidates,” said New York State Republican Party chairman Ed Cox, noting he’s been involved in Republican politics since 1968. He credited the backlash to Obamacare in 2010 with generating an unprecedented wave of top-tier Republican politicians, from Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
Still hanging on to O'care for dear life, eh? Guess the backlash also generated that "top tier" class of candidates in 2012 too.
For all of the Republican National Committee’s best-laid plans to have a streamlined and efficient primary process after a lengthy and bruising 2012 primary season, the size of the 2016 field — the largest in modern presidential campaign history — is working to unravel those efforts. Many chairs expect that it will be well into the spring of 2016 before the field is seriously winnowed down, even though few expect all 17 candidates will still be in the contest by early next year.
Now this is more like it. As recently as February, RNC chair Reince Priebus
was bragging about "taking control of the presidential primary debate process" for 2016. Ha. Haha. Hahahahahaha.
“I don’t have a sense of dread about where things are,” said John Hancock, the chair of the Missouri GOP. “I’m very optimistic that we’ve got some phenomenal candidates who are going to wear very well as they get more and more exposure.”
The chairs expect the deep GOP presidential bench to inject energy into the party and force campaigns to visit often-ignored states under the assumption that the nominating contest will be prolonged well beyond the traditional early voting states.
It's true that in 2008 the Democratic Party benefitted greatly from the enthusiasm generated by the long nominating process between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The difference for the GOP is that their policies aren't broadly popular. So even if the process inspires the base, it's not going to win any fans among independents or potentially swayable voters. In fact, the idea that the more exposure their candidates get, the more they're "going to wear very well" demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of popular opinion in America today.
Please proceed, GOP. Ignorance is definitely bliss in this case.