How about giving President Barack Obama a full one year head start on the 2012 presidential election? Twelve months to raise hundreds of millions in campaign cash, to organize volunteers, to run media, and to test message and issues, while the Republicans promise not to have a presidential candidate for at least one more year. Sound like a plan?

That is precisely what the Republican Party is planning for 2012. Yes, this is the Republican National Committee plan, not the president’s, worked out by the GOP so amicably with the Democrats in their unending search for bipartisanship and reasonableness, which somehow always ends up helping the Dems.

Of course, with both parties in agreement, not a word of this has hit the media. In their shoes, I would keep it quiet too. What is going on here? It is simple: in recent years the Republicans have caught the Democratic-fix-the-nomination-rules disease. Democrats caught this malady beginning with their 1968 Convention, when liberal activists took over the rules committee – chaired by later presidential nominee George McGovern – to require proportional allocation of delegates to be “fair” to women and minorities, eventually leading to quotas. The result was an endless nomination battle to secure a winning majority as every state split the vote proportionately among several candidates. This “fairness” was only in the eye of the beholder so its definition changed at each convention to satisfy the newest balance of interest forces.

By 1980, the Democratic nomination process had become so chaotic that Congressman Steny Hoyer– today the minority House whip – testified to the Democratic rules committee that their party was losing elections partially because of this delay in selection and that they should learn from the Republicans the value of keeping the rules stable and rational and not trying to micromanage the process. Hoyer especially praised the GOP winner-take-all process used for the House of Representatives that allowed them to select a president expeditiously while the Democrats dithered and delayed with their proportional system, allowing the Republicans to campaign while Democrats were still fighting each other. The Republicans kept this advantage for 24 years until the triumph of their moderate forces under George W. Bush at the 2000 convention.

I first became involved in the arcane business of convention rulemaking by innocently flying on an airplane headed for the 1972 Republican convention in Miami Beach, sitting behind an individual talking so loudly it was impossible not to listen in. It turned out this was New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s top party convention organizer who was outlining his convention strategy to the fellow seated next to him. Although I had been sent by the American Conservative Union to protect conservative interests at the convention, our bete noire Richard Nixon was guaranteed re-nomination and we had no real concerns other than the platform. Loudmouth proved we were hopelessly naive.

While Gov. Rockefeller had no chance in 1972, he was planning ahead for 1976. He figured if he could change the presidential nomination rules for selecting delegates to be based on pure population rather than the Electoral College and bonus points, he could switch enough votes from conservative states to win the nomination. So his forces rallied behind “democracy” and “majority rule” for the GOP – at least for these purposes – and the liberal media gobbled it up. Unfortunately, mainline Republicans did too. Falling for the “good government” rhetoric, the moderates had created a “reform” committee modeled on the McGovern one and convinced the RNC to switch to a population-only, proportional and quota rule system. Only the convention Rules Committee stood between the RNC and adoption by the full convention.

Rockefeller’s loudmouth was planning how to convince this committee of conservatives to adopt his boss’s plan. He had already secured the votes of forty percent or so Nixon moderates and expected to pick up conservatives from the large states that would gain delegates by his plan of allotting them by direct population. “It was almost a done deal,” he concluded. Besides being caught flat-footed, the conservatives had no organization, no money and no leader. It is a long story how they fought back and secured the support of big state California Governor Ronald Reagan and not only defeated the plan but adopted a better one than the status quo. The point is the final rule was rational and even fair and lasted a quarter-century to become the envy of the opposition party.

That advantage is all long gone. On April 1, 2011, the Republicans announced their new delegate selection rules. On April 4, 2011, President Obama announced the opening of his re-election committee, aiming at raising a record-breaking $1 billion. The Republican rules will not allow a nominee to be determined until after April 1, 2012. Delegates selected before that date must be selected by proportional rather than winner-take-all rules. That is the Republican gift to President Obama – a one year advantage running clear of any opponent. Actually it is much worse for the GOP. The process is supposed to have Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina begin February first or so, the states using proportional rules starting March 6, and the rest not beginning until a month later. If everyone follows the rules, it is unlikely a nominee could be selected before May.

But, naturally, rules that appear arbitrary provoke others to disobey them. The Florida Republican legislature has threatened to hold its selection process on January 31 in violation of the rules even if it means it will lose half of its delegates as the rules provide, although expecting that the national party would not dare to do so at the end of the day. If Florida moves, then Iowa would move back to January 6, New Hampshire to January 24 and Nevada and South Carolina to January 28, potentially losing half of their delegates too. This would be chaos but would actually shorten the time for a presidential candidate to win a majority of the needed delegates, thus somewhat reducing the Obama advantage.

There is more – but it moves things in the opposite direction. Texas law requires federal and local primaries be held the same day and practical and cost considerations are leading its GOP legislature to move its projected delegate selection primary back to April. This change by such a large state would substantially delay the date possible to achieve a majority. Even more important, the largest state, California, is having serious financial problems and the legislature is leaning toward returning its selection day to June, where it was for years. If Texas and California move back there might not be a GOP nominee until summer.

This is to say nothing about the effect on potential Republican candidates. Several presidential candidates are holding back assuming the present schedule. Yet, if Florida moves its date earlier these candidates would need to file and organize much sooner than they planned in the early states. If Texas and California move later, a longer race with proportional allocation of delegates favors the candidates who win early, who have money and have bland messages. These are not necessarily positive elements if one wants to choose a candidate who can win or one with a solidly conservative message.

Republicans were going to have a tough enough time in 2012 without getting tangled in a bureaucratic rules mess. Newly-selected RNC chairman Reince Priebus will be hit from every side for exceptions. The old rules let each state decide on its own when to select delegates, trusting each state Republican Party to make its own rational decisions as conditions changed each election cycle. Freedom, federalism and winner-take-all work in delegate selection too. The party should change back to the old more constitutional selection method at next year’s convention and stay with it for the future. In the meantime, President Obama and Representative Hoyer must be laughing up their sleeves.

Donald Devine was the director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management from 1981 to 1985 under Ronald Reagan and is the editor of ConservativeBattleline Online.