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January 11, 2008

Michigan Shenanigans Nothing New

My friend Jazz Shaw at Middle Earth Journal points out a plan in the works, endorsed by Markos Moulitsas and Duncan Black to have Michigan Democrats play spoiler in the Republican primary. Their idea is to have Democrats vote for Mitt Romney so that he wins the primary and blunts John McCain's momentum. If Huckabee or Thompson win in South Carolina and then Rudy Giuliani wins in Florida, the thinking goes, the GOP Super Tuesday will go all higgledy-piggledy and the Millenium will have truly started. Or something along those lines.

Well, it's not illegal, and they could do this in any open-state primary if they wanted. However, it seems exceedingly silly and more than a little risky. Romney could put together a very credible general-election campaign; he's got essentially the same kind of resources that Michael Bloomberg has, and a much larger established constituency. All Mitt really needs is one win before February 5th to regain credibility and momentum; the money's already there. If the Democrats want to hand that to him, Mitt won't have a problem with it.

I suspect that almost all of the crossover votes will get cast earnestly. We'll see how that plays out, although I suspect McCain would get the biggest boost from it. While Kos and Atrios reach a good number of people nationwide, I doubt that they'll be more effective than the Michigan state Democratic Party, which is organizing people to vote in their own primary instead. This is just another footnote in the annals of open primaries, an old story resurrected to likely little effect.

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» Crossover Mischief in Michigan from Outside The Beltway | OTB
Markos Moulitsas Zúniga has issued a call for Democrats to come out in droves to influence the Republican primary in Michigan: In 1972, Republican voters in Michigan decided to make a little mischief, crossing over to vote in the open Democratic prima... [Read More]

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