This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
If you are doing something the wrong way, practicing it over and over doesn't help you get better. It just cements bad habits. See: Shaquille O'Neal, free throw shooting.
See also: Utah Republicans, democracy.
At its annual state convention Saturday, the Utah Republican Party saw its sitting governor, among the most popular chief executives in the nation and holding a wide lead in the polls, come in second among convention delegates.
But then that same convention also approved an absurd resolution calling on state and local officials to ignore anything that has happened since 1865 and "nullify" any federal laws, rulings or regulations Utahns might oppose.
All more support, were that necessary, for the conclusion that the caucus and convention system the party doggedly clings to is a way for the few to have power over the many.
The argument is that convention delegates are better able than the average voter to take the measure of each candidate. But that doesn't help at all when the people doing the measuring are so overwhelmingly unrepresentative, not only of the state but also of the party's general membership.
Gov. Gary Herbert will still be on the statewide primary election ballot June 28. There his fate will be determined, not by a mere 4,000 convention delegates, but by as many as 600,000 registered Republicans.
Herbert held his challenger, businessman Jonathan Johnson, to less than 60 percent of the convention delegates. Enough, under the old rules, to keep Johnson from winning the party's nod outright. Herbert also gathered the signatures necessary to qualify for the primary, no matter the convention outcome, under the terms of last year's Senate Bill 54.
Facing that larger, and more moderate, electorate, Herbert likes his chances. His approval rating has been set at 55 percent or above, and a recent poll places his re-election support among registered Republicans at 72 percent.
His policies, including his Healthy Utah version of Medicaid expansion, support for public education and comfort with the status quo on laws governing firearms, put Herbert well in the mainstream of Utah political thought.
Johnson's hot-head call for the state to immediately sue the federal government for control of 30 million acres of federal land within the state's borders, his incorrect charge that Herbert has ceded control of the state's school curriculum to the feds, his hope to continue the futile fight against same-sex marriage, place him well to the right of Utah's general population and even its mainstream Republicans.
But, apparently, well within the comfort zone of convention delegates. Which is why SB54, and the Count My Vote initiative that preceded it, should be the direction of Utah's political future.