[muawiyah]

The deal is the political parties make a claim that they'll represent your interests and intentions. They then do various things including identifying the delegates who will vote at a convention.

Been going on a long time. If you don't like the way the delegates vote, then vote for a different party.

Or, like I suggested, emigrate to Denmark or Israel ~ they really do do it differently than we do with a whole 'nuther set of assumptions. They still have representative democracies ~ they just get there in incomprehensible ways. But, like I said, it'll be different.

[Bruce Campbells Chin]

The deal is the political parties make a claim that they'll represent your interests and intentions. They then do various things including identifying the delegates who will vote at a convention.

Been going on a long time. If you don't like the way the delegates vote, then vote for a different party.

So what if it has been going on for a long time -- does that make it any more right? The rules for primaries weren't handed by by Moses, nor are they based on any discernable constitutional principle. A state party is certainly permitted to have the final word on how it will select canddiates for state races. But likewise, the party at the national level has the right to set the rules for how candidates at the national level will be chosen. And if some state party organizations choose to disenfranchise ordinary voters by letting insider delegates vote however they want, regardless of what citizen voters said, then the national party has every right to ignore those votes.

This is a bunch of whining from the semi-professional activist class who believes their opinions should count for more than the votes of ordinary citizens. Screw them. If I cast a vote for a candidate, in my case Newt, I have every right to support rules that ensure that vote actually goes to that candidate, or, if that candidate withdraws, he (rather than some delegate whom I've never met and know nothing about) has my proxy.

Or, like I suggested, emigrate to Denmark or Israel ~

No thank you. Perhaps you should emigrate if you don't like the rules set by the national party for the nomination of national candidates. I've served my country in the Marines, in combat. I've earned the right to support changes to party rules that protect the votes of ordinary people, with ordinary lives, who cast their votes expecting they'll actually go to the person for whom they voted, without being filtered by "grassroot activists" who think they know better.