With Fairfield students back on campus, the parties are back in full swing – but for many political junkies the real parties occurred earlier in the week in Florida and North Carolina.
These “parties” were the Republican National Convention, held in Tampa from August 27 to August 30, and the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte from Sept. 4 to Sept. 6.
Held every four years in advance of the presidential election, nominating conventions serve to select a party’s presidential nominee and adopt the party’s platform for that election cycle.
Historically, nominating conventions have been heated affairs, with candidates wheeling and dealing to gain the state delegates needed to win.
However, there has not been a truly close contest at a convention since Ronald Reagan almost upset incumbent Gerald Ford in 1976. Rather, conventions often begin with the public quite certain of a party’s future nominee. This year was no different, with Republican Mitt Romney and incumbent Democrat Barack Obama the assumed, and ultimately nominated, candidates.
With party nominees known in advance, conventions have taken on a new form: uniting in support of this dominant candidate. Largely ceremonial, modern nominating conventions are attempts to rally support for the nominee and formally introduce them to the general public.
Junior Nick Givas, the Connecticut state chairman of Young Americans for Romney, thought the RNC reached these goals. “I thought the RNC couldn’t have gone better,” he said. “We were able to come together and unite under one banner in the name of preserving our future.”
For Jordan Freeman ‘13, a supporter of President Barack Obama, the DNC was also a success: “The convention, as usual, did its job of showing the best side of the party and contrasting them to their opponents.”
However, for some, the nominating conventions were not entirely united. Both the RNC and DNC endured criticism for their exclusion of certain groups within their party.
Sophomore Connor Kelly, who watched both conventions, said, “When a candidate has pretty much locked up the nomination from their party ahead of the convention, the event becomes more of a one man show. There isn’t much room for dissenters in that kind of environment.”
Indeed, critics of both conventions complained that differing opinions were squandered rather than embraced.
At the RNC, many Ron Paul supporters were upset by rule changes that barred some of their delegates from the convention and that will make it harder for so-called “non-establishment” candidates, like Paul, to win in the future.
Paul, while certainly not likely to win the nomination, had been working party rules to increase the voice of his sect of the Republican Party. Prior to the RNC Paul had conceded that he could not win the nomination but would not be dropping out of the race.
Many Ron Paul supporters saw the event as an attempt to silence a growing majority within the Party.
Givas, on the other hand, said. “Mathematically, Governor Romney locked up the nomination well in advance. … The simple fact is that the people have spoken and chosen Governor Romney as their nominee.”
In Charlotte, similar dissention plagued the DNC. In their original 2012 platform, the Democratic Party had removed mentions of God and Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, causing many pundits to criticize the new, secular stance.
Kelly, although not critical of the move, nevertheless saw the removal of the words as politically damaging. “The majority of the United States is Christian and supports the Jewish state, so politically the move could have alienated people who think the Democrats are ignoring Christian values at home.”
Perhaps in response to such worries, the DNC reinserted language into the platform affirming, in the words of Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, “that our faith and belief in God is central to the American story.”
This came after the third attempted vote to insert the language, with the first two votes failing to achieve a discernible two-thirds support. After the third vote, some convention attendees were heard booing the decision.
Both these cases seem to demonstrate that in the current two-party system not all voters feel completely satisfied in either party. While the incidents at the nominating conventions will probably be long forgotten by Election Day, the fact remains that these “homeless voters” often make all the difference in the outcome of an election.
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