Critical Primary Theory

Another Progressive Disaster

By: Curly Haugland

Curly.Substack.com

Critical Primary Theory (CPT) is a political movement with the singular purpose of deposing political parties from their position in the nomination process and replacing political parties with primary “elections”.

Critical Primary Theory was first developed by the Progressive Party in the early 1900’s when statutes creating presidential primaries first appeared with the stated intent that primaries would nominate candidates “in lieu of caucuses and conventions”.

Critical Primary Theory had little effect on the major national political parties, however, until 1972 when the McGovern/Fraser Commission of the Democratic Party introduced the concept of “binding” delegates; forcing delegates to cast their votes at their national convention according to the results of primary elections.

At that time, not all states held primary elections.  

And, Democrats soon realized that creating “robots” out of ordinarily free citizens was a serious mistake.  In 1982 the delegate “robot rule” was removed from Democratic Party Rules by the Hunt Commission and replaced with a rule that pledged convention delegates to cast their votes “in all good conscience”.

REPUBLICAN PROGRESSIVES ADOPT CRITICAL PRIMARY THEORY 

The Critical Primary Theory movement found favor in the Republican Party in 1976 when the Ford campaign, holding a slim majority among the delegates to the 1976 Republican National Convention, adopted a convention rule “binding” delegates to vote according to earlier primary results.

That effort, while it helped Ford defeat Reagan in 1976, quickly lost favor with grassroots Republicans who unceremoniously removed the binding provision from the rules in 1980.

Nonetheless, with “binding” nonexistent in the rules of either party, Critical Primary Theory advocates continue their Progressive efforts to replace parties with primaries using a little understood psychological weapon, GASLIGHTING.

Thanks to the COVID-19 lockdown, transparency in education has shown Americans how Critical Race Theory advocates achieve their goals by working covertly within our previously trusted institutions.

Critical Primary Theory influences politics in the same manner that Critical Race Theory influences education; working tirelessly within trusted institutions.

They both employ GASLIGHTING very effectively.  

WHO ARE THE CRITICAL PRIMARY THEORY ADVOCATES?

In this newsletter, we began with the documentation of the MEDIA GASLIGHTING which is so essential in the advocacy of any “Critical Theory”.

But the media has not been so successful promoting Critical Primary Theory without collaborators.

The rest of the Critical Primary Theory team includes political lawyers, consultants, pollsters, academics, and others who receive economic benefits from primaries.

Critical Primary Theory, with respect to the presidential nomination process, did not advance much from the 1980 Republican rebuke of “binding” delegates until the next class of Critical Primary Theory advocates began a huge initiative to advance CPT in the 1990”s.

Most of this wave of advocacy was at the hands of Republican lawyers and other influence peddlers.

Primaries became the “plastics” of Republican politics in a real sense in 2000.  Future Substack posts will provide details about how the lawyers and consultants have conspired to insert “binding” provisions into the Rules of the Republican Party.

To illustrate the economics of presidential nominations, we look at the presidential primaries of 2016 and 2020.

In 2016, a total of 17 Republicans and 6 Democrats began campaigns for their respective presidential nominations.

That immediately created economic opportunity for 23 lawyers doing “ballot access” and legal compliance work; 23 consultants; 23 pollsters; 23 list vendors; 23 phone vendors; 23 direct mail vendors; 23 fundraisers; etc.

Likewise in 2020, the Democratic primaries attracted a whopping 29 major candidates with its attendant windfall for the political industrialists.

Now watch what happened in both cases.

As the primary season approached, there was no limit to the number of candidates welcomed into the fray.  There was a feeding frenzy for all!

Then, as the primary season progressed, there began to be subtle pressure on those losing the “invisible” primary, aka the “money” primary, to drop out; “winnowing” the field.

This process continued into the election year, but as the “early state” primaries approached, the “dropout rate” increased due to the large amounts of money needed to buy ads in the early states.

Prior to the need for advertising dollars essential to primary success, many candidates could survive simply by raising “gas money” to campaign in person.

Accelerated winnowing begins with the first states delegate selection events.  Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida and Nevada primary and caucus results place heavy pressure on poor performers to drop out.

Pressure comes from loss of donors, to be sure, but there is no greater pressure than that from the mainstream media.

Pundits and “strategists” are interviewed ad nauseum to help flush losers from the fray and consolidate the field.

All this to the end that there absolutely must be a “presumptive nominee” to the exclusion of all others long before the party’s actual presidential nominating conventions.

CRITICAL PRIMARY THEORY NARRATIVE

All the advocates of Critical Primary Theory are in lockstep with the narrative that the primary process chooses the nominee; not the delegates to the national conventions, and that the “will of the voters” cancels the First Amendment rights of party members.

If, at any time, a nomination actually goes to the convention for a decision, the entire corrupt primary fraud will collapse.

David Drucker, writing for the Washington Examiner, is a particularly prolific advocate of Critical Primary Theory.  

Drucker has previously disclosed the fact that his wife was a partner at Drucker Lawton, a political consultant firm.

Now, however, Jenny Drucker is the finance director working directly for Senator Rick Scott, the chairman of the Republican National Senatorial Committee. 

Most notable, however, is the fact that while Rick Scott’s name appears in nearly every recent article written by Drucker about presidential primary politics, Scott has never been asked why he visits delegate poor states like Iowa and New Hampshire instead of delegate rich states like New York, California and Texas.

Ever since the first Progressive efforts to use direct primaries to replace parties in the early 1900’s, American political observers have recognized the flaws inherent in primary nominations.

In a 1909 issue of The North American Review, a Princeton University professor, Henry Jones Ford warned that “The idea which commends the direct primary to the masses is that it is a means of giving power to the people.”  In doing so, however, he argued that direct primaries would “take advantage and opportunity from one set of politicians and confer them upon another set.”

In a December 19, 2019, issue of The Atlantic magazine, the headline to an article by Jonathan Rauch and Ray La Raja reads: 

“TOO MUCH DEMOCRACY IS BAD FOR DEMOCRACY” with a subhead “The major American parties have ceded unprecedented power to primary voters. It’s a radical experiment—and it’s failing”.

And remember, that was written even BEFORE President Biden became the Democratic nominee, thanks to primaries.

Critical Primary Theory advocates in the Republican Party know that gaslighting to preserve the false claim that “binding” delegates according to Rule 16 is essential to the survival of primaries over parties in the Republican nomination process. 

This introduction to Critical Primary Theory with its similarities to Critical Race Theory demonstrates the huge impact a failed political party, the Progressive Party, continues to have on America.

Future newsletters will discuss the need for Republicans to address the looming conflict between primaries and party as the 2024 race for the Republican nomination accelerates.