The Washington Post previews Thursday night's Republican presidential debate in California, which will be televised nationally on MSNBC, and explains how California's role in the nominating process is completely different this year than in campaigns past.
As 10 Republican presidential hopefuls gather here for their first debate Thursday, their political advisers are rewriting decades-old strategies about how to campaign in the nation's most populous state. With the state's primary looming as the biggest prize in the massive national battle developing for Feb. 5, California has shed its status as a non-factor in recent nominating contests, say top campaign advisers and the state's veteran GOP activists.
New rules adopted by the state party, meanwhile, have scrapped winner-take-all voting for a system that awards three delegates to the victor in each of the state's 53 congressional districts. That change, coupled with the state's decision to move its primary date, has scrambled the GOP contest here 10 months before it takes place.
"It's like a mini-electoral college," Ed Gillespie, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said of California. "It's so big, and it was so late that generally it just affirmed the nominee. It's different this time. It's going to help make the nominee and have a lot of sway."
The GOP debate will take place at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
The San Francisco Chronicle predicts Reagan's name will be invoked often by the various candidates:
"If this debate were a drinking game, and you had to imbibe every time you hear the word 'Reagan,' you would pass out before the closing remarks,'' predicted Bill Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
Hah!
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