McCain Sucks! maybe less than the dims, but he still sucks. So does this primary process. This cycle is the first exercise of the mechanics in my voting lifetime (when we don't have a pre-ordained successor candidate) of the primary process, and it's totally broke. The fact that 4% of the population can deselect half of our candidates is unbelievable ( and those states are mostly blue states, they're not gonna vote red anyway...). We need to rebuild.
“This cycle is the first exercise of the mechanics in my voting lifetime (when we don’t have a pre-ordained successor candidate) of the primary process, and it’s totally broke.”
And that’s another reason why I say both Bushes have trashed and weakened the Republican party built up by others.
Neither of the two VPs selected by the Bushes became a strong presidential contender after the Bushes, Quayle because he was so unknown when selected and too easily diminished by the media, and Cheney because of health considerations and maybe age.
But neither Bush picked a VP that could logically became a strong presidential candidate. They picked for purely personal reasons (many guesses what those were), and as with many of their decisions, did nothing to strengthen the party or its future prospects. Each seriously damaged the party’s future, and their selection of VPs is just one more example.
Okay. I understand and don’t disagree. However, if we’re going to rebuild, what do we coalesce around? What are the core issues that we all agree on? You can’t put together a coalition of voters without a platform. Politics in general has become so sound-bite oriented, so divisive and full of factions that I really don’t know what the common threads are that hold us together. We have to identify those things, and agree on candidates based on those things, or we will just bicker ourselves to insignificance while the pragmatists (and/or those who will say anything to anybody to gain power) get their way.