It has become a predictable annual event, like the first tourist getting tossed ass over teacup by a Yellowstone buffalo. It is the “free space” on the Cowboy State’s political bingo card. I am, of course, talking about the Wyoming Republican Party getting into an intramural food fight, and then coming to the government of Wyoming to sort things out.
I see that the Wyoming Republican Party is suing itself again in our state courts, this time over credentials in the state Central Committee leadership elections. The attorney for the GOP went so far as to say that, since the party is a private organization, it doesn’t need to abide by Wyoming statutes or pay attention to Wyoming Supreme Court decisions.
The irony in this situation is thick as harness leather.
At the risk of repeating myself, I’ll repeat myself. The sovereign State of Wyoming needs to cut the apron strings that bind political parties to state government. The Wyoming Legislature should go through Title 22, our election code, with a fine-toothed comb, and pluck out any reference to political parties contained therein.
It makes absolutely no sense to have laws on our books that govern the internal workings of private organizations like political parties, and then have those parties ignore the law. The State of Wyoming doesn’t tell the Rotary Club how to conduct its internal elections, any more than it tells the Elks Club what to include on its buffet menu.
Political parties, like service clubs or lodges, are private membership organizations and should be allowed to conduct their business by their own rules. Government has no place monkeying around in them, unless their rituals involve human sacrifice or fissionable material.
Private political parties should also stand on their own two feet, and not come running to government to referee their frat-house pissing matches. When they resort to appealing to government to settle their internal differences, political parties make themselves look like weak little wards of the state who can’t handle disputes among themselves, instead of the proud paragons of political thought that they like to call themselves.
Here, as I see it, is the only nexus between political parties in Wyoming and government. The parties can, if they choose to do so, submit a slate of candidates to the Secretary of State and county clerks for inclusion on the general election ballot. Once that is done, the relationship is over. Basta. Finito. End of story.
How the parties derive those names should be totally up to them. There is no need for government to conduct primary elections at public expense to accommodate private organizations such as political parties.
If the Democrats want to have an axe-throwing tournament to choose their candidates, then so be it. If the Republicans want to conduct a swimsuit competition to choose theirs, fine and dandy. It is not government’s business to interfere.
And this nonsense about the parties controlling vacant seats in government by submitting three names to the governor for selection needs to go! Those seats belong to the citizens of Wyoming, not to any political party. If a seat becomes vacant, then a special election should be held to fill it. Let voters decide, not party hacks.
Political parties are useless appendages on our body politic. They have meaning only to their members and, outside that small circle, they only offer entertainment value to the rest of us.
Wyoming’s state lawmakers would do everyone a favor if they’d re-read Madison’s cautionary advice about political factions in the Federalist Papers #10, then take a chainsaw to our election code. Free the parties to be the private outfits they want to be, and liberate the rest of us from their partisan goofiness.
Selah.