Yeah, Michigan Republicans are Limited in Their Primary or Caucus Options for 2024

The decision is less "malleable" than some in the party realize

It is no secret that the Democratic National Committee decision in February to officially move the Michigan presidential primary into the pre-window period among the other early states for the 2024 cycle has had and will have implications for Republicans in the Great Lakes state. They are in a bind:

• Choose the February 27 presidential primary and lose all but 12 delegates to the national convention for holding a contest before March 1.

• Alternatively, the party could opt for a caucus/convention system to allocate delegates at a later and compliant time on the calendar.

Only, the choice is not as binary as that. But the problem for the Michigan Republican Party is that everyone seems to be treating it as if it is one or the other. That is the picture one gets from Jonathan Oosting at Bridge Michigan in his in-depth update on where various parts of the Michigan Republican party are in their thinking on the matter ahead of the party’s state central committee meeting this weekend. It is primary or caucuses, high turnout or low turnout, state-run or party-run (for the first time since 1988), (national delegate) penalties or no penalties, and open or closed contests. That is a lot to juggle, and it is all on the radars of folks within the Michigan Republican Party orbit.

But there is one thing that they all seem to be missing and the catch is right there in a passage in Oosting’s piece: