Michigan Dems Should Bill Mitt $5 Million
The MI GOP, which believed it could guarantee a win for Mitt Romney but produced only a delegate tie, voted to ignore the election results and give Romney the win anyway.
Michigan’s two at-large delegates to the Republican National convention will be awarded to Michigan native Mitt Romney, following a vote last night by the state party’s credentials’ committee.
The vote came despite the party’s rules that the two at-large delegates are supposed to be awarded on a proportional basis based on the statewide popular vote. Romney won the statewide vote by a 41% to 38% margin over former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.
[snip]
As a result, Romney gets 16 delegates and Santorum 14.
The move comes the day after a Romney supporter said that Rick Santorum should give back the delegates he won because Democrats crossed over to support him.
“[Santorum] cheated by asking people who would never vote for him for president to vote for him in the Republican primary,” Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) said on a call with reporters. “I believe that he should agree to give back a percentage of the delegates that he won in the Republican primary with Democrat votes that would never support him for president.”
I need to figure out what the precise results for CDs were, but I would bet that the 2 delegate swing to Romney would effectively do precisely what Turner demanded: given Romney as many delegates as he would have gotten if Dems hadn’t crossed over.
So I think the MDP should bill Mitt $5 million. After all, all taxpayers in the state paid for Tuesday’s primary (I believe, but need to double check, that the cost was $10 million). The GOP even invited us Democrats to vote in their primary. So our votes should count. (FWIW, I couldn’t bring myself to vote for Santorum; I voted for Fred Karger.)
And yet, the GOP have just held a private vote to invalidate our votes.
But Mitt has plenty of personal money to pay back the state for half the primary cost. And at $2.5 million per extra delegate, it’s not all that unreasonable a cost given what Mitt has paid elsewhere!
How much did Mittens and his SuperPAC’s have to spend in Michigan. Other than his two presidential campaigns, does anyone know the last time Mittens stepped foot in Michigan?
At least in MI, the millions were spent on actual delegate selection. Here in Missouri, we paid millions for a beauty contest.
@Peterr: The state had to pay for THAT?
When we want to have stupid contests like that here in MI, the parties have to pay for it.
I got invited to a Rom town hall for Columbus. I was extreeeeeemly surprised by the call. It was not a robo call either.
I figured the MI Repubs would do follow the lead set by the Dems back in ’08, when Hillary’s votes were given to Obama (iirc).
@emptywheel: Yes.
$7 Million from the state coffers.
It’s still only a two-delegate differential from a primary where half of the so-called lead pack didn’t run, and Mitten’s home state no less. I guess favorite sons are now in the political twilight. As it i, this di actually covr the requirements as I understood them a priori: each CD had their delegates and there were at-large ones rewarded for the overall vote. So even though Mittens won, it wasn’t big enough to blow the rest out. Next Tuesday will be verrrry interesting.
Let’s also not forget that Mittens is [for now] the “establishment” choice, Rove himself said so some time ago. Now, if I were cynical, I might think that Mitt’s getting some serious $$$ to be the pinata while the brokered convention is “arranged”. It sure looks like it to me.