Honestly, did anyone get anything out of last night’s debate (aside from jokes about white flecks and Trump’s dick)? What a waste of time. Garbage candidates and garbage audience (amazingly, the Fox moderators were the high point despite their obvious attempts at Trump gotchas). If I was the RNC, I’d want to pull the plug on these things – they only serve to embarrass the party at this point. I felt worse for having watched it.
The “old days” as I understand it involved a lot of behind-the-scenes control by party bosses and so lots of potential for corruption. The kind of system I described is a lot more transparent.
Is it good or bad to have a system where the front-runner and presumptive nominee is a shock to the party establishment and is fracturing the very foundations of the party? I suppose it depends. In this case, when said presumptive nominee is a national and international laughingstock and a dangerous idiot, it’s clearly pretty bad. Moreover, the system appears to have rejected one of the reasonable moderates along with various lunatics, and is giving the remaining reasonable moderate basically zero chance of a nomination. Also pretty bad.
No system is perfect but as I see it, since voters don’t always make wise choices it’s good to have a system that maximizes the chances of turning out reasonable candidates, so that the worst candidate they can pick is still going to be a half-decent leader and is not going to be a conniving lying populist demagogue.
Sure, but you can’t really call them “primaries” because (at least in the systems I know of) it’s not the general electorate that participates, it’s the party organization. That’s crucial difference #1. They elect delegates at the electoral district level who then vote for the party leader from among the declared candidates at a leadership convention. Furthermore, this only occurs when a new leader has to be selected and is completely independent of election cycles – a leader remains in place as long as the party wants him. That’s crucial difference #2. Either way, all that stuff is done and over with long before election season begins and campaigning starts, hence campaigns tend to be relatively short.
Yeah if anything I would say Parliamentary parties have a caucus system. It’s always a party run election for the local rep and the party establishment and leader has a lot more authority.
I dunno, I think the gravitas of a caged nude one-man-leaves Jell-O wrestling match would be more appropriate.
No one wants to see that. Now, if each candidate were championed by a nubile bikini babe, well, that’s a whole 'nother kettle of fish.
LOL, ISWYDT.
Meanwhile, the Onion proves its prescience, regarding Drumpf’s tiny, shriveled, non-functioning member:
http://www.theonion.com/article/donald-trump-stares-forlornly-at-tiny-aged-penis-i-28589
Supporting and encouraging his proto-Brownshirts at his rallies to attack protesters and kicking out people who are just standing there AT THEIR OWN UNIVERSITY makes him an authoritarian thug.
“Ted Cruz’s Crumb” has its own Twitter account.