This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated.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 not a Utah County Republican delegate, selected by your peers in a neighborhood in Provo, you likely are an uninformed voter, who is morally inferior and more concerned about what you're having for dinner on election day than who is running for president.

This is the latest blubbering of Utah County Republican Chairman Craig Frank, whose obsession with the traditional caucus/convention system of nominating candidates has led him down mysterious paths of logic.

He has tried to withhold critical delegate information from legitimate Republican candidates for committing the sin of gathering signatures to get on the primary ballot besides vying for the nomination through the convention.

That is evildoing, according to some Republicans, like Frank.

He has taken sides in Republican primaries, even though the Utah County Republican bylaws prohibit party officers from supporting one Republican over another Republican.

He has justified that by claiming those who got on the primary ballot by gathering signatures are not real Republicans and the ones who prevailed at the convention are the true party candidates.

And now, the former member of the now-defunct Patrick Henry Caucus that basically embarrassed itself out of existence is getting all literary on us.

Frank has unleashed an eight-minute video sent to Republicans through email but also available on YouTube, in which he lectures everyone on the true meaning of the Constitution and a representative republic and why we shouldn't vote for Republicans who got on the ballot by collecting signatures.

After all, what would the Founding Fathers think?

He quotes from the tome "American Heritage: an Interdisciplinary Approach," and the philosopher David Hume to make his case for a multi-tiered process to select candidates.

Those sources, he says, argued that when we select good and moral people (delegates) to then choose the best and most moral people we get the best candidates in the end.

The alternative is to let the unwashed masses who don't pay attention to anything to vote in primaries for candidates not previously vetted by the most moral and virtuous people — like Republican delegates.

The chairman laboriously explains how delegates are chosen at neighborhood meetings, then they choose the party's nominees at the party convention, or if nobody reaches a certain threshold at the convention, they are chosen in the primary.

It's all these tiers of selecting candidates that is the foundation of our electoral process, says Frank.

Just look at the Electoral College. Electors were chosen from each state to elect the president and vice president.

I'm going make a pitch here. Go to the video and see Frank's monologue. Maybe you'll find his arguments exhilarating and go to work to repeal SB54, the bill that created the signature gathering or, to Frank, the less moral approach.

I found it hilarious.

Meanwhile, leaders of the Salt Lake County Republican Party proposed a bylaw change at its February central committee meeting to allow party officers to endorse candidates in a Republican primary.

The current bylaw that the leaders wanted to change prohibits party officers from taking sides when Republicans are running against each other and requires they wait until the party has a nominee to make an endorsement.

The proposed rule change was needed, they said, because of the passage of SB54, which allows candidates to get on the primary ballot through the signature gathering process. The party leaders, just like the ones in Utah County, insist their legitimate nominees are the ones selected at the convention by the delegates.

But the central committee voted to keep the no-endorsement bylaw in place.

No matter. Because of their hatred of SB54, party leaders broke the rule anyway.

Suzanne Mulet, chairwoman of the Sal Lake County GOP, recently endorsed Sen. Lincoln Fillmore, R-South Jordan, in his Republican primary race against Rep. Rich Cunningham, R-South Jordan, for his Senate seat.

Fillmore got the 60 percent delegate vote at the convention to eliminate Cunningham and become the nominee, but Cunningham obtained the required number of signatures from registered Republicans to qualify for the primary ballot anyway.

So in order to enforce its caucus/convention system and punish candidates who choose the other path, party leaders broke their own rule that had been upheld by the party's governing body.

So to Utah County Chairman Craig Frank, more tiers are better. And to Salt Lake County party Chair Mulet, laws are made to be broken.

It's just one big happy family. Ronald Reagan's big tent. —