It doesn’t matter whether the primaries are open or closed. Last Jan., too many candidates quit the race too soon. Ex-Sen. Thompson, Rep. Hunter, Rep. Tancredo, and ex-Mayor Giuliani quit the race after about five states held primaries or caucuses, and they didn’t know the views of the voters, in about 45 states. They should have stayed in the race longer, to ensure that the nomination process would take longer. The Republicans would have received more publicity. We knew, in March, that McCain would be the nominee, and the reporters mainly talked about Barack and Hillary for the following three months. In Nov. 2011, we should ask all of the republican presidential candidates to continue campaigning until May or longer.
The media had plenty of help from “conservatives” who were more concerned about stupid crap like name recognition, electability, charisma, etc. And not enough concern with conservative principles.
Worse yet it looks like morons are ready to do it all over again despite the fact that they got all they wanted in the last election, never mind the fact they lost.
On name recognition. Lets not forget that most of us had never heard of Sarah Palin until a few weeks before she was chosen for the VP slot and that unknown is what carried John McCain as best she could.
We need to hold our primaries in most states at the same time. I voted in Ohio after McCain was chosen but I still voted for Thompson, it was a waste of time. This needs to be fixed before we have the media again choose our candidate.