‘Unless You’re a Purist, We Don’t Want You Voting’ – By David Siders (Politico) / Jan 30, 2024
The Nevada GOP wanted to ensure a Trump win. They wound up making the state irrelevant.
LAS VEGAS — Downstairs in a roped-off corner of the lobby at the Ahern Hotel, off the Las Vegas Strip, the chair of the Nevada Republican Party was trying to convince a club of fellow Republicans to go along with a perplexing plan: To hold a party-run caucus two days after the state’s presidential primary in February.
Upstairs, overlooking the lobby, Chuck Muth told me the whole thing wasn’t just counterintuitive or confusing for Republican voters. It smacked of insider “bullshit.” The state party, he said, just “wanted the caucus rigged for Trump.”
And then Muth, a former executive director of the Nevada Republican Party, tried to explain to me how Nevada’s Republicans got into this mess — and helped make their state irrelevant in the process.
On Feb. 6, the state will hold a primary in which GOP voters will go to their usual precincts but there will be only one serious contender, Nikki Haley, on the ballot. Then, two days later, the Republican Party will host a caucus in which GOP voters will go to school gyms and church basements where they can express their support for only one credible candidate, Donald Trump.
CONTINUE > https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/30/donald-trump-nikki-haley-nevada-00138372
