HorsesAss is detailing irregularities in the Washington State Republican primary, which "WSRP Chair Luke Esser officially called ... [with only] ... 87.5% of precincts reporting." The race -- which allocates half of Washington's delegates -- was close, very close: John McCain (25.4%), Mike Huckabee (23.8%) and Ron Paul (20.7%). The GOP website gives no data on percentage reporting.
Were party leaders remembering 1996, when Ellen Craswell, a fundamentalist, took the Republican nomination for governor ... setting up Gary Locke's landslide victory? Were they trying to be strategic, for a change?
Mitt Romney has been the GOP caucus leader, not McCain, who does better in open primaries. And even though Romney had withdrawn, he still got 17% of the vote on Saturday. This makes next week's primary vote even more interesting.
In the meantime, Huckabee has cried foul and the state GOP has supposedly resumed counting (recounting?).
Comments
look deeper. the blogosphere comment boards are rife with posts by washington republicans railing against those who foolishly assume that they “vote for candidate preference” at their caucuses here. the party rules even state this. the bizarre thing is that Luke Esser still claims to be “counting” something. so what the heck is it that he’s counting???
Accusations of irrgularities … in Washington? WOW! This is the state where the gubernatorial race was decided on a “find enough bags of votes until the Democrats get what they want” basis.
Ho-hum!