George Will forgets Republican Party loves its own borders to be open: In over half US states GOP doesn't have its own primary, democrats and indeps. are allowed to vote, in some cases GOP E even begs others to vote along with Republicans such as 2014 Mississippi primary

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2014 article:

8/6/14, "Angry Republican leaders ready to shut door on open primaries," Washington Times, Ralph Z. Hallow, "Changes sought after Mississippi Democrats help Thad Cochran beat Chris McDaniel" 

"Republican primaries that are open to independents and Democrats in more than half of the states don’t give voters much reason to pick one party over the other, aside from ideological views.

About 25 percent of voters identify themselves as Republicans, 31 percent as Democrats and 42 percent as independents, according to the most recent Gallup poll on the subject....

Currently, 27 states let independents and Democrats help pick Republican candidates for general elections. The reason usually is not the desire of the state GOP but rather that the state legislature has mandated open primaries or requires no party registration."...  

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In Tennessee it's the specific desire of state Republican leadership that democrats and independents influence selection of Republican candidates:

Feb. 2014, Tennessee Republican Party leaders vote overwhelmingly, 37-29, to keep its primaries open:

2/7/14, "Tenn. Republican Party leaders reject closed primaries," AP via wkrn.com, Nashville

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8/12/15, "Donald Trump is a counterfeit Republican," George Will, Washington Post, opinion (Disclosure:This columnist’s wife, Mari Will, works for Scott Walker.)

"A political party has a right to (in language Trump likes) secure its borders. Indeed, a party has a duty to exclude interlopers, including cynical opportunists deranged by egotism. This is why closed primaries, although not obligatory, are defensible: Let party members make the choices that define the party and dispense its most precious possession, a presidential nomination. So, the Republican National Committee should immediately stipulate that subsequent Republican debates will be open to any and all — but only — candidates who pledge to support the party’s nominee."...

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Open borders GOP leaders in Tennessee reject closed primaries:
 
2/7/14, "Tenn. Republican Party leaders reject closed primaries," AP via wkrn.com, Nashville

"The executive committee of the state Republican Party has turned back an effort to hold closed primaries in Tennessee.

The panel voted 37-29 on Saturday against the resolution aimed at requiring party registration to vote in primary contests.

Currently, Tennessee voters aren’t registered by party, and people sometimes vote in a particular primary because of campaign developments rather than party affiliation.

Supporters of closed primaries say crossover voting can unduly influence the outcome of nomination contests. And while state law allows challenges for people who are “not a bona fide member” of a political party, that status is not clearly defined.

Any change in voting laws would have to be approved by the General Assembly. But because Republicans hold supermajorities in both chambers, GOP executive committee decisions carry extra weight."


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George Will no doubt treasures the 2014 Republican open borders primary in Mississippi when his pals campaigned for democrat votes and won with them. Dr. Codevilla's recap of 2014 Mississippi GOP primary including NY Times quote from a black Democrat paid to organize for Republican Cochran:

6/30/14, "The Ruling Class Went Down to Mississippi," Angelo M. Codevilla, Liberty Law site

"The mass of GOP and independent voters, having come to see themselves as disadvantaged and insulted by the ruling class, have increasingly supported anti-establishment candidates to challenge it in Republican primaries. Accurately, the Republican establishment sees this as a greater threat to themselves than any Democrats could be.

In the Mississippi primary, Republican establishmentarians from around the country solicited votes from Democrats to defeat the insurgent challenge to Senator Thad Cochran. Their arguments were the same ones used by the bipartisan ruling class that has ruled America for a generation: 

The role of government is to generate benefits for its clients, and those who object are bad people.  

They paid many Democrat voters (nearly all black) so called “walking around money” for their votes, and have refused in many counties to let McDaniel aides examine the voter roles to see whether these voters were eligible to cast ballots.

The retail corruption is much less remarkable than the acquiescence therein of the establishment’s leadership – such as Karl Rove and The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page. This is very remarkable. Rove’s super-PAC, “Conservative Victory Project,” which played a leading role in recruiting Democrats for Cochran, exists explicitly to defeat insurgent Republicans everywhere.

The Journal’s editorial page, whose editorials and featured columnists mobilized opinion against the Mississippi insurgency, had done the same throughout this and previous years’ primaries. Rove’s post election commentary glossed over the vote-buying as if it had not happened, while the Journal’s Jason Riley endorsed it cynically as “minority outreach.”

To Republican and independent voters who are dissatisfied with the direction of the country, the conflict between the pretenses and the actions of such as Rove and of the Journal added insult to injury. The Journal, for example, never loses an opportunity to declare itself the mortal enemy of “crony capitalism” as it decries the direction in which America has been headed, while the word “conservative” as part of the title of Rove’s super-PAC intentionally evokes the complex of sentiments of voters angry at the ruling class’s characterization of them as, well, the litany: “racist, greedy, stupid,” etc.

Indeed, the Republican Party’s very identity, the one, sole, argument it makes to persuade voters to vote Republican rather than Democrat, is that it will take the country in a direction different from the one in which it has been going.

But, in the Mississippi primary, the Republican Establishment’s campaign was by and for crony capitalism, and employed the classic themes by which the ruling class has beaten down the rest of America.

To Mississippians white and black, the establishment’s message was: All this Tea Party talk about dangerous deficits and the need to cut spending is a threat to responsible officials’ capacity to bring you the jobs and federal assistance on which your prosperity depends. Orchestrating that message was Haley Barbour, former governor of Mississippi, former national chairman of the Republican Party, and arguably Washington’s biggest lobbyist.

Day to day operations were run by Stuart Stevens, formerly chief strategist in Mitt Romney’s 2012 national campaign, along with Henry and Austin Barbour, Haley’s nephews. There could be few better personifications of crony capitalism.

To the blacks, who, according to The New York Times’ FiveThirtyEight.com provided some forty thousand votes, the message was:

Don’t be intimidated by the Tea Party....Mississippi cannot and will not return to the bygone era of intimidating black Mississippians from voting. We must rise up on Tuesday and have our voices heard on who will represent Mississippi in the U.S. Senate. VOTE THAD COCHRAN.

The Times reported the effect: Roger Smith, a black Democrat who said he was being paid to organize for Mr. Cochran, said, ‘I don’t know too much about [Cochran’s opponent] McDaniel other than what McDaniel is saying:

that he’s Tea Party, he’s against Obama, he don’t like black people.”

In short, those who oppose the way things are done in America are racists. You ought to hate them as they hate you.

Why do such things? Cui bono? Clearly such behavior by the Republican establishment has nothing to do with the role it claims for itself of opposition to the direction on which America has been taken in recent decades, never mind with anything “conservative.”

It has everything to do with maintaining its status, and that of its clients, within the ruling class.

The Mississippi primary confirmed yet again that, if America is to go in a direction other than the one of which some three fourths of American disapprove, it is compelled to do so with a vehicle other than the Republican Party."

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"Angelo M. Codevilla professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University. He served as a U.S. Senate Staff member dealing with oversight of the intelligence services. His new book Peace Among Ourselves and With All Nations was published by Hoover Institution Press." Photo above from Liberty Law site.

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More than "just GOP votes" needed to win 2014 Mississippi GOP primary: 

6/4/14, "Incumbent in Mississippi Runoff Aims for More Than Just G.O.P. Votes," NY Times, by Nick Corasaniti and  Jonathan Martin, Flowood, Mississippi

"Senator Thad Cochran’s supporters opened Mississippi’s Republican Senate runoff on Wednesday by signaling that they would treat the race like a general election and seek the votes of Democrats and independents."...

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***Extra credit: In 2010 George Will's open borders Republican Party was fine when its incumbent pal Lisa Murkowski lost the Republican primary in Alaska in 2010 but decided to run against the official GOP candidate in the general election as a write in candidate:

9/17/2010: "Sen. Lisa Murkowski has  decided to run as a write-in candidate in the Alaska Senate race, according to a person briefed on her plans, throwing what had expected to be an easy race for Republicans into turmoil....

Murkowski narrowly lost the Republican primary to the Tea Party- and Sarah Palin-backed Joe Miller."...

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11/18/2010, "Lisa Murkowski claims victory in Alaska Senate election," LA Times, Kim Murphy

"Murkowski, 53, a centrist Republican, ran with strong support from Alaska Native organizations, the state teachers and firefighters associations, and the Anchorage police employees association. Her substantial cash reserves were supplemented by wealthy Native corporations and other supporters.

"She had all the money, and she had the Alaska establishment behind her," said Michael Carey, columnist and former editorial page editor of the Anchorage Daily News.

Murkowski has been in the Senate since 2002, when her father — a former senator — became governor and appointed her to replace him."





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