The Rules Are There to be Followed

The rules, set by the Virginia General Assembly, to gain access to a state party’s presidential primary are pretty straightforward: A candidate must file petitions with at least 10,000 signatures of Virginia voters, included 400 from each of the state’s 11 congressional districts.

Sound pretty simple? Pretty to-the-point?

Well, not if you’re Newt Gingrich or Rick Perry, two high-profile Republicans who failed miserably and publicly to get a slot of Virginia’s March 6 presidential primary.

So what have the former speaker of the House of Representatives and the governor of Texas done?

Well, if you’re Gov. Perry, you launch teams of high-priced lawyers to drag the commonwealth and the state Republican Party into court to cry discrimination in an attempt to force your name onto the primary ballot. And if you’re Speaker Gingrich, you fire all cannons on board in the direction of state party leadership, claiming they’re being unfair, discriminatory and overly onerous while denying state party members a real choice.

Well cry us a river.

What Gingrich and Perry’s primary ballot fiascos shine a light on is the two candidates’ almost total lack of organization and discipline in running a national campaign for the highest elected office in the United States. This was a test of organization and competence, and the whining duo flunked it abysmally.

And now, like all sore losers, they’re trying to blame their own ineptness on someone else, either the General Assembly (which wrote the rules) or the state party leadership (which runs the show on the ground).

Speaking on a Des Moines, Iowa, radio show after failing to make the Virginia ballot, Perry, according to the Dallas Morning News, said, “I don’t know what happened.”

“Don’t know what happened”? And you’re running to be president of the United States of America?

In 2008, when Barack Obama became the first Democrat to win Virginia since 1964, the Old Dominion immediately became a national battleground state for the 2012 election. The commonwealth’s convention votes will be one of the most notable Super Tuesday prizes for whoever wins the GOP primary.

It’s simply unfathomable that two candidates of such stature and standing as Perry and Gingrich couldn’t muster a better boots-on-the-ground effort to ensure their names would be on the primary ballot. It’s less unfathomable, however, that the pair’s responses would be those typical of sore losers.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Rep. Ron Paul, of Texas, surprisingly, are the only two GOP hopefuls who qualified for the state primary ballot. What that says about the rest of the Republican field — Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Jon Huntsman and a host of other lesser names — is immaterial.

The failure of Perry and Gingrich, however, speaks volumes.