The Utah Republican Party is one sick dog.
But there is at least one partial cure: Go outside and eat a bunch of grass and purge yourself of what ails you.
The 4,000-odd state GOP delegates (and there are a few really odd delegates) may have a chance at their state convention Saturday to do just that:
Purge themselves mostly of what ails the party.
I’m talking about the so-called Gang of 51 – the die-hard, my-way-or-the-highway group that is disrupting party operations.
Most Utahns could care less about this party infighting.
Most Utah Republicans could care less about it.
But the festering, cancer-like growth is not going away by itself.
It must be cut out.
And delegates should do it Saturday.
Many of the 4,000 delegates may not know what is really going on. But let’s hope they educate themselves enough to take action.
Beleaguered party chairman Rob Anderson says that 51 percent of the delegates are new to their post.
They may have been county delegates before, or party precinct chairs or held other minor party offices – or no party office at all.
But they haven’t been state delegates before – or at least not for a long time.
If Anderson and other GOP delegates can cobble together a two-thirds majority late in the afternoon tomorrow, they will be able to pass one or more proposed bylaw/constitutional changes that could purge many of the Gang of 51.
At least, via Central Committee term limits and changes to the rules that now allow a minority of Central Committee members to call “special” meetings where much mischief has been made, the delegates can stop – one way or another – the Gang of 51 from screwing up party operations.
In a year when the Utah GOP should be organized, cohesive, and fundraising to elect their candidates in what appears now to be a Democratic wave, the Gang of 51 are wasting time, money and energy on their fruitless fight against fellow Republicans who favor giving candidates the option of gathering Republican voter signatures to get on the closed party primary ballot.
Why?
Because these caucus-only zealots see that the signature route – supported by most rank-and-file Republicans in Utah, Dan Jones & Associate polls show – will lessen the die-hards power to run the party and select candidates who are more like them: Arch-conservatives who want to control county and state governments – even when they are not the majority in Utah, not even the majority in the Utah Republican Party.
It’s a major belief in America that voters are smart enough to pick their own leaders.
But for some reason, these anti-SB54 extremists don’t trust voters — Republican voters — to decide their own party nominees at the ballot box.
No, they demand that a few Republicans (not ever a majority of registered Republicans) will go to March caucus meetings on a Tuesday night to elect state delegates (4,000 of them) who, in turn, will by secret ballot pick party candidates in the convention.
Most GOP registered voters aren’t picking these delegates.
And the delegates’ convention votes are secret, so even the caucus-goers don’t know how their state delegate voted.
Or, we could have – via the signature route – GOP candidates picked by registered GOP voters in a closed June primary – where you can get your ballot by mail and have the convenience of voting in your house – instead of having to go to a March night meeting to elect someone whom you never know how they voted.
The caucus/delegate/convention process is outdated, unfair, and unrepresentative.
But the die-hards love it.
And they’ve proven they will go to any extent to keep their delegate-only power – including threatening to kick out of the party any candidate who takes the legal signature-gathering route to a party nomination.
Saturday, 2,666 or so of the 4,000 delegates can purge what is sickening the Utah Republican Party.
It’s time to have some courage.
And eat some grass.
