The Long Primary

by Patrick Appel

Noah Millman unpacks the new Republican nomination system:

There is logic to wanting a more drawn-out primary process, rather than rushing to anoint a front-runner (as, for example, the Democrats did in 2004). The primaries become a proving ground, testing the candidates to see whether they measure up to their own hyped virtues as vote-getters. But, as the Democrats learned in 1984 and 1988, when you have a weak front-runner or no obvious front-runner, all the long campaign does is reveal that weakness (in the first case), and reveal the divisions in the party coalition (in the second case). The GOP is getting some of both this time.

Bottom line: for a long primary process to reveal diamonds in the rough, the diamonds actually have to be there in the rough for the revealing.