Quote:
Originally Posted by JPhillips
There has to be a better way to pick our presidential nominees.
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That's the hiccup, it's not our nominee, its the Republican party's. I'm sure it works as a mini-fund raiser. I don't understand all of why either party uses this drawn out process, but I'm sure that's part of it, it's about fundraising, promoting the brand coast-to-coast, trying to create the appearance of momentum for one candidate. If either party was just looking for the nominee their party members wanted, a 1-day national primary would probably do a better job. If they wanted those in power to decide, relying on the conventions would do a better job. I'm sure there's reasons to do it this way instead, including having the meaningless caucuses, but I think it's counterproductive, especially with the Republican party this year, because we hear months and months of national news coverage about Republican candidates using rhetoric that is not helpful to their general election chances (e.g. Romney telling everybody who would listen that he was "severely conservative" or whatever as governor as MA...in a general election, the fact that he was governor of a liberal state can only help him).