What I don’t understand is how all these powerful people are allowing this to happen
Or how all these "powerful people" allowed John McCain, an aging, emotion dominated, incompetent speaker, to be the "conservative" opposing candidate to Barack Obama.
That's why I like the idea of open primaries.
Republican voters get to vote for the worst Democrat candidate and Democrat voters get to vote for the worst Republican candidate.
So, instead of choosing between the lesser of two evils, as is done now, we will have to choose for voting for one of the two greater evils or choose to vote for a candidate from outside the two-party system.