Friday, November 30, 2007

Virginia GOP Loyalty Oath

I know this is dated news, the VA GOP requires Primary voters to vow, before getting their ballot, to vote for the GOP nominee in the General election. The avowed purpose is to prevent non-GOPs from voting in their Primary and messing it up. Yep, messing it up. No, really the VA GOP is afraid bored Democrats with nothing better to do will try to vote for the worst candidate, sabotaging the results.

Now I don't want to be a complete partisan ass, but jeepers, who is the worst? How could the Democrats make a worse mess of this than they're doing on their own? This idea is sure gonna help make the Virginia GOP members feel swell about the General. There might be some who would look at somebody of a different Party if their candidate didn't win, they'll probably think twice about voting. This would seem to take the Party into an even narrower base, this kind of stuff could be fatal to the future of the Republicans in that state. Worse news for them is that Virginia is trending Democratic currently.

Tied together with this news is the news that the GOP is outraged that the GOP Utube debate had at least one Democrat ask a question and they suggest that some of the stereotypical GOP base questioners were plants as well. Now while I'm pretty unsure that it was appropriate for Gen. Kerr to make a speech at their debate, the question was a valid one. If these candidates cannot deal with these questions, then what are they doing running for President? Worse, if the GOP cannot deal with the relevancy of these questions, then exactly how relevant is the GOP? Now I don't think much of the entire slate and I don't think by the time they're done with each other that there will be much left for the General. Huckabee was the standout winner as "nice guy" and John McCain gets "Mr. Furious." I suppose Ron Paul gets "Most Principled" and "Least Mentioned" is George II with 2, both negative.

I'm not going to take this thing apart, if you were interested in that you would have watched it or read any one of the transcripts floating around. This was a really uncomfortable night for the candidates and it got pretty rough amongst themselves. I watched the thing with my lefty Democratic bias and came up with an across the board loss for them with the general public. I think the losing is going to get worse, and it will be the candidates driving it. If violence flares again in Iraq, other than Paul they've all staked a lot on staying at war and that will really bite them. The one thing that could rescue the warmongers would be a political solution in Iraq and that sure seems like wishful thinking.

I'd rather run in the General as anything other than one of these guys - oh that'd be a Democrat.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

It would be pretty hard to understand Paul's positions, not because he can't tell you what they are in these debates, it's because he got 2 and half minutes out of 2 hours. Between CNN squeezing him out and Sean Hannity shilling for Rudy you might question whether if and when the American public tunes in will there actually be a relevant debate.

Unknown said...

the Democrats have done it there too, so this is less an issue than one might think.

Chuck Butcher said...

Yes, Catch22, your lack of numbers keeps away the exposure to get numbers so you become irrelevant and a joke. Espeically if the "big" interests aren't happy with your stands.

Anonymous said...

open primaries solves the problem.

Chuck Butcher said...

If YOU want to change a Party, why is it the Party's responsibilty to become another Party, (D/NAV/Whaever) rather than (D)? I belong to the Democratic Party, I may want to influence some of its directions in a different way than current but that's why the (D) on my registration. That's all it takes, a (D).

If the rest of the objects of the Democratic Party are outside your interests why do I (D) want YOU (?) picking my candidate?

There was a simple method for the Rs in VA to deal with it, close their Primary. It doesn't stop people from changing their registration, but it is a principled method, registration is a declaration that you want to participate in that Party without binding you to anything stupid.

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