Just want to make clear to everyone, GOP-e in Virginia go by the names of McDonnell, Bolling and Cantor. Bolling wants the primary system so he can cheat.
To be fair, to the degree the establishment is the people who are currently in power, Cuccinelli would also be part of the GOP-E, as a statewide elected candidate who has his own powerful allies on the state committee.
If he didn’t have a lot of power over the establishment, there’d be no chance of changing to a convention, and as the report says, if he tells his people no, it won’t happen.
I prefer primaries to conventions. We have conventions of course in part because we don’t have political party registration, so all of our primaries are open. We need to get that fixed, so we can do closed primaries.
But, having attended several conventions, I much prefer the 10 minutes to go vote in a primary over the hours of wasted effort to make my voice heard in a convention.
If there is a convention, I might well go and vote against whoever it was that forced me to go through that again.
I happen to like both Ken and Bill very much, but I will be supporting Ken, and expect he will win a primary without too much trouble (Bill is just too “nice” — I wish he’d have run for the senate seat this year, he’d kill Kaine, and be a better senator than George Allen will be).
Of course, to the degree GOP-e is used as a derogatory, I reject the notion that any of the three statewide leaders are a problem. They have all served conservatives well over the past decade. Any victories we have had can be attributed to their hard work, including Bill Bolling casting the tie-breaking votes in the Senate.