State's GOP primary waste of time, cash

Don’t blame the local media. Don’t blame the county clerk’s office. Don’t blame the vast left-wing conspiracy. Blame Newton Leroy Gingrich.

Residents called the Pettis County Clerk’s Office and the Democrat this week to complain that Gingrich was not listed on the sample ballot published this week for the Feb. 7 Republican presidential preference primary. But the absence of Gingrich, who now is running neck-and-neck with Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination, was not an oversight, a slight or an overt attempt to deny Missourians the opportunity to vote for him.

As the Democrat’s Dennis Rich reported Jan. 4, “Gingrich will not appear on the ballot, and told reporters at an early December press conference in New York that Missouri’s February election amounts to little more than a “beauty contest.’ ‘The Missouri primary doesn’t have any delegates attached to it,’ Gingrich was reported as saying. ‘And so this was a conscious decision; this was not an oversight.’ ”

Gingrich’s decision points out the folly and futility of the mechanism that Missouri Republicans decided to go with. After a measure to move Missouri’s presidential primary date to February was vetoed by Gov. Jay Nixon due to what he called “unacceptable” election-related provisions attached to to the bill, state Republican Party leaders opted to “unbind the delegates from the primary” — so the February election will have no bearing on the selection of delegates. Thus Gingrich’s “beauty contest” comment.

Republican delegates will be determined in a party caucus scheduled March 17. So what is the point of the Feb. 7 GOP primary? Good question. From what we can tell, it’s just another way to pointlessly spend what lowest estimates have pegged at $4 million in taxpayer dollars.

Missouri lawmakers wanted to move the state’s primaries up so they would carry more meaning in the national races. However, what state Republicans have done has the opposite effect, as the GOP primary carries no weight whatsoever.

So Missourians who wanted to cast their ballot for Gingrich now know their votes wouldn’t have mattered even if he was on the ballot. That should upset them more than him not appearing on the ballot.