>> It’s really stupid of Virginia to do this. Gingrich is going to be on the ballots of all 57 states other than Virginia. And he’s leading the polls in Virginia. They are in fact disenfranchising the hundreds of thousands of voters who would mark their ballots for Gingrich. >>
This is what the “rules are rules” crowd will not address, because they can’t. Virginia will look absolutely foolish to have a rule that is designed only to winnow fringe candidates and it ends up winnowing out the first and fourth place candidates in all the polls. That is clearly a stupid rule and Virginia, not the candidates, will look stupid.
There’s no way around that. Some 70% of the Virginia Republicans will not get to vote their choice - due to a bureaucratic technicality. That will not make the state look good. It won’t make Mitt or Ron Paul look good either.
Their win will be like Obama’s Nobel Prize win: obviously not deserved and therefore a public embarrassment.
Isn't this problem really a VA Republican Party problem and not a state of Virginia problem? Just asking...