Notes on the Montana GOP caucus

As MH predicted, it Romney won solidly. And as we noted more recently, it was not as big of a win as we had earlier predicted. It was not the kind of landslide that he had in Wyoming or Nevada.

The results of the caucus were basically in direct proportion to the amount of organizational effort that went into the state -- with one exception, and that is that McCain greatly overperformed, considering the absence of any McCain campaign efforts during the time that organization could make a difference. This shows the fundamental strength that McCain has in Montana, and it means that regardless of the Democratic nominee and regardless of how many Republicans are drinking the Ann Coulter "I'm going to campaign for Hillary if McCain is nominated" Koolaid, McCain should handily win Montana in the fall.

Perhaps more encouragingly, when one adds up the McCain and Huckabee votes, it can be said that nearly a half of the caucus voters (who can be assumed to be at least somewhat representative of the party base) doesn't pay any attention to the opinions of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, choosing rather to think for themselves.

The caucus, at least in Yellowstone County, was a pretty pumped-up affair. One is reminded of the strength of caucusing when it comes to party-building. It would be nice to have party registration so we could have caucuses in every precinct in the state -- but we'll probably have to wait a little while longer for that.

Montana's 25 delegates were certainly sought-after by the campaigns. Had all the campaigns been tuned in as early as the Romney camp was to how the caucuses were going to work, we would have seen even more activity by the candidates over the last year. It was nice to know that candidates were having to pay enough attention to Montana to have staffers studying issues of importance to Montana Republicans, crafting literature and phone messages to pitch their message to Montana caucus-goers.

And it can only be good for Montana to have Montana Republican leaders making connections with candidates and top-level staffers of the various campaigns at a time when those campaigns are actually paying attention and at a time when they are grateful for every bit of support that they can lap up.

For decades, Montana politicians have been left out of this kind of networking that connects our leaders closely to those who are or will become leaders in the national party -- or perhaps residents of the White House.

Now, two things remain -- to capitalize on all of the grassroots party building that has resulted from the caucus; and to do an evaluation of what worked, what didn't, and how things can be improved upon next time.

And we certainly hope that there will be a next time. There are lots of ways to keep this going, and we have suggested some ideas, such as making the June primary binding on the second and subsequent ballots of a convention. Another way would be to have the caucuses assign some of Montana's delegates, and the primary assign others. Yet another would be to have the caucuses be non-binding (which means we could have them even earlier without penalty, but with the reward of having them bring attention and "Montana front-runner status" to the winner.)

It may be old-fashioned to say so, but we have really lost something by making primaries ubiquitous in the delegate selection process. Political parties, with the tempering effect they can have on the political process by forcing broad coalitions to form, have lost influence. And as a result, our politics has become more viciously partisan, not less so.

So, we'll leave it on that old-fashioned note. We look forward to the 2012 Montana Presidential GOP caucuses.