The ongoing republican presidential nomination race has brought about many interesting twist and turns. The fight to represent the party in a race against President Obama has pushed the candidates into a heated battle that has left some worried about the lack of cohesion from the republican base. The Republican National Committee (RNC) set up the candidate selection process this year so as to allow for more competition between candidates and prevent an easy victory for one single candidate[1]. Some say that this is poor planning and will cause candidates to tear down the eventual nominee, making him a weak challenger for President Obama, however, recent history has shown otherwise. Which brings into question whether or not intraparty competition helps or hurts parties in the end?
Primary elections are very different from those of a general election in many respects, one of which is that each candidate must run on a more individually accountable ticket, rather than being able to run collectively with a party. According to John Carey, electoral rules, as well as candidate selection, can decrease party unity. Each candidate is forced to differentiate himself from the rest of the crowd in order to win over the party base. The more intraparty competition there is, the greater the decrease of party cohesion[2]. This lack of cohesion has been quite evident through this recent nomination process. Mitt Romney has been teetering in and out of the front-runner spotlight, while candidates like Newt Gingrich, and more recently Rick Santorum have been battling their way to the top. This prolonged brawl has made candidates poke holes in each other’s reputations in an attempt to bring them down. This menial bickering, however, has caused them to attack principles that are generally promoted within the republican ideology. One of Mitt Romney’s conservative strengths has been his strong capitalist background, which is generally a respected republican value, but in this race he has been attacked for his business experience, saying that it has detached him from the general public. This and other attacks on conservativism have been made by each one of the candidates. Such attacks may bring candidates down, but they also start to pick apart and factionalize the party.
This type of competition, however, was seen in the 2008 Democratic Party nomination process. While John McCain was able to wrap up the Republican Nomination fairly quickly, the Democratic Nomination dragged on. This close race was defined by candidates taking harsh jabs at each other. In this race, Barrack Obama said that Hillary Clinton “parses and calculates and shifts for political position,” was “not seen as trustworthy by the American people,” and ranked as “one of the most secretive politicians in America today.”[3] Both Obama and Clinton won about 40 percent of the delegates during the nomination battle[4], which made many worried that the Democratic Party had split and would not be able to pull together for the general election. However, on November 2, the party banned together and came out with a commanding victory over the Republicans[5].
While this year’s nomination processes seems to be detrimental to the Republican Party, it could turn out to be just the opposite. Although intraparty competition can seem to factionalize a party, it can also help strengthen the party and its candidate, as well as prepare him to compete in the general election. If history is on the side of the republicans, they could have the momentum to beat the democrats in this year’s presidential election
[2] Carey, J. (2009). Legislative voting and accountability. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
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