Posted on 01/22/2010 6:27:08 AM PST by Thirteen
I certainly hope so. I mean, how insane is it to allow your opponent to help pick the person they'd like their candidate to run against? It's been said that without the crossover votes in open GOP primaries, John McCain would not have won the Republican nomination. If one looks at things objectively, McCain would probably come in no better than third among all the 2008 GOP candidates in both popularity and the ability to defeat Obama or Hillary.
It was all a done deal by time our state had the GOP primaries. There has got to be a better way.
I hear ya and totally agree. I wish there was a way to contact Mr. Steele via email so we could flood his inbox with requests such as this and he could get a word back to confirm something or deny it. RNC seems so secretive right now. BUT, BUT, BUT, I am not of the the belief that a 3rd party is needed such as the Perot fiasco.
No telling how the Michigan primary might have turned out if the democrats had a primary of their own to vote in.
Does anyone know what the reasoning was behind the moving to open primaries? Seems to me like it’s another one of those things that looks good on paper, but in practice causes more problems than it solves.
Or was it another of those ideas intended to get out the vote? IMHO, if a person has to be catered to and coddled to get them out to vote then we’re probably better off without their participation.
Somehow we’ve got to get control of our election process. We’ve got to get back to the point where those who vote are those who take an interest in what’s going on and will make an effort to exercise their right to vote.
But as for open primaries, I vote to do away with them completely! Let members, and members only, decide who will gets the support of a particular party.
There were several early primaries where McCain got around 35% of the vote, yet won all or most of the delegates. IMO, this is what killed a number of the more conservative candidacies.
With the mess that George W. Bush left, there is not a Republican candidate in the world who could have been elected in 2008. Not even Duncan Hunter could have won.
I don’t know about that. John McCain was probably the worst candidate the Republicans could have chosen, yet he still ran a pretty close race.
>> I wish there was a way to contact Mr. Steele via email so we could flood his inbox with requests such as this and he could get a word back to confirm something or deny it.
It doesn’t make a bit of difference what Steele (or you, for that matter) think. The question of open primaries is up to each individual state.
I agree that open primaries are nuts. But, y’all, get real. It is highly unlikely open primaries will go away everywhere by 2012, let alone by 2010.
If you feel strongly about the issue, ranting and raving on this forum may feel good but it will accomplish nothing. Again, you need to work on getting it done at the individual STATE level.
Delphinium, would you care to share with these folks how hard it is to close a primary, even when you live in a very conservative state and when most Republicans in your state want it to happen?
Actually John McCain trailed virtually everyone till he was the last man standing. As guys like Romney and Thompson dropped out and released their delegates, McQueeg benefited.
I’m sure those big donations from the likes of AIG helped a lot.
Last election cycle I was still in Indiana, my primary vote didn't mean squat, mccain had it sowed up.
Only because Palin was on the ticket!
Who do you think could have won in 2008? Not Romney, that is for sure. People don’t like Romney for his flip flops?
Fred Thompson was a campaigning dud. He couldn’t beat McCain in S.C.
I’d love to see the raw numbers of actual votes the candidates recieved. I think people would be quite surprised.
One thing I can say for our open primary in Michigan is that you can’t split the ticket. If you vote for one republican, all down ticket races have to be between republicans. That probably helped to scare quite a few democrats away from playing with the GOP primary.
Unfortunately, this is a matter of state law, and varies from state to state.
If they have open primaries in 2012, Barack will select his opponent and direct his ACORN and SEIU minions to raid open-primatries and vote for his selected opponent.
I suspect Huckabee or Romney. Either one keeps the conservative vote very depressed.
Thank you for making it clear how hard it is to close a Republican primary, even in what is one of the most conservative, and Republican, states in the Union.
Your efforts are admirable, and they clearly show the utterly degraded state of Republican leadership.
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