Making Logical Rules

I’m sure that Leaders of the Utah County Republican Party hoped that their policy reversal would put this stupid move on delegate email distribution behind them. They have done the right thing now and released the delegate email lists to all Republican candidates but their excuse for the original action lies somewhere between lame and pathetic.

Monnahan had promised delegates she would keep their e-mail addresses private. At the caucus meetings, leaders declared the e-mail lists would be used only for internal party business.

That was a new policy. The party had provided delegate e-mail addresses to candidates in the past. Two longtime legislative district chairmen forgot the new rule when they got the delegate e-mail lists and handed them over to the Republican candidates in their district.

I will give them the benefit of the doubt and accept it as lame, but the cynic in me still holds out the possibility that it was a pathetic excuse for an underhanded attempt to swamp the challengers in the Republican primary.

Next time they want to try to save the delegates from unwanted solicitations they should write a policy that goes something like this:

• If you are a delegate to the county convention your email address will only be given to candidates you will be choosing among at the county convention, and it will not be passed to the state party by us. If you are elected as a state delegate we will pass your email address to the state party, but not to the RNC.
• We trust our candidates not to engage in shady practices against faithful party members whose votes they are trying to win, and we trust our delegates to be smart enough to recognize when a candidate is not fit to represent our party.