If the rockefellers belong with the dems, it seems that the tent is getting smaller and smaller...
You do live in a democracy. And in order to gain power, a majority have to agree or at least acquiesce. What Brooks is on about is that the appeal to "purity", "true conservatism" doesn't appeal to the electorate as it exists.
Sure you can beleive that with enough prostylizing the number of true conservative will swell.
Only evidence suggests that isn't happening.
Guaging from the growth of social ideas that are anathema to social conservatives (Gays in military, gay marriage, contraception and legal abortion options) the core of socail conservatives aren't holding sway.
Social conservatives aren't necessarily "small government". In fact they would depend on government to legislate (or continue to legislate) the social conventions they want to force on the populace... So the ron Paul types don't comfortably fit under that blanket ..... and the social conservatives can't abide the libertarians that would have people making individual choices...
Bottom line is that Brook longs for the Republican party that doesn't exist anymore. The one that hadn't made a deal with social conservatives in the south and found itself torn asunder 35 years after the compromise that brought religion into the political tent.
religion is about belief. Abandoning belief for evidence and constrant reexamination of cause and effect ....has been a disaster for fiscal conservatism. (Pauls beliefs about small government are equally sustained by belief that often belies the facts, or history too. But thats another stry.)
Thats the wing of the party Brooks misses... The rational logical fiscal conservatives who helped build the nation after WWII,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbLTovqG ... r_embedded
This will be a landslide for Obama, plain and simple.

still too early to tell ...

There's a long way to go before we can say much about November. I think the Republicans are shooting themselves in the foot with this race, as there'll be plenty of fodder about whoever wins out of this bunch.

The polls seem to be swinging back to Romney now. But if he can't win Ohio, it's going to drag on even longer.

I think its kind of odd that Ohio is considered so important in the republican primaries right now. In the same extensive NBC Marist poll (sample of 3566) that has Santorum 2 points ahead of Mitt ...they did a head to head of every Republican Candidate versus Obama.
Every one was 10 points or more behind Obama. So a so called swing state, that right now looks safe for Obama is going to be incredibly important in choosing the eventual republican candidate.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/

rickyp wrote:I think its kind of odd that Ohio is considered so important in the republican primaries right now.

The only reason it's so important is because it has the second biggest delegate count for the day but is not a landslide by anybody in the polls. I don't think Ohio is the big story by itself but rather the number of states out of the 10 voting on Tuesday that each win. For example, how many does Romney have to win to basically force someone else out of the race?

If Gingrinch wins Georgia but finishes 3rd or 4th every where else, does he stay in or drop out?

Gingrich will stay in as long as he can fuel his ego. Winning Georgia will be enough to sustain him for a couple of weeks. And he's being financially supported by one patron essentially. If the casino magnate continues to pony up, he'll stay around like the proverbial dirty shirt.

If the race gets down to delegate counting, the proportional system and the strange way some states aportion delegates will also delay a definitive win. By strange way, see Washington state where the "straw poll" had no impact what so ever on the eventual delegate selection...
I get the delegate importance of Ohio. But, I wonder about the fact that a state that is unlikely to vote republican has an outsize influence over the eventual candidate. I suppose that thought has to be applied to the whole process though.
Choosing a candidate through this process (Democrats too) sure seems impossibly convoluted and only vaguely resembles the concept of democracy. Still....good theatre.

The influence of Ohio (and Florida and New Hampshire) is a positive in that those 3 states can go either way in the general election. Ohio and Florida have an outsized influence on the ultimate Presidential choice as they are the two large swing states. I contrast that to South Carolina which will vote Republican anyway.

It clearly is a system designed by history and committees and laws. No one would intentionally create such an approach.

An interesting tidbit: Democrats were horrified by the SC's Citizen's United decision. But in fact, it's turned out to be deadly for the Republican party during this nominating process.

Still doesn't make it right. If anything it vindicates the Democrat position that Romney can basically win through his PAC packing out the adspace due to massive disparities in spending.

yes, the law and what is right and wrong are 2 different things. I'm also commenting that we cannot always predict the implications of the law.

Romney could have outspent his rivals prior to the SC ruling on Citizen's United. There had been no restriction on how much of one's own money one could use. Overturning Citizen's United just enables individuals to provide unlimited contributions to "independent" PACs. In this case, since Romney has a net worth over $500 million, he could have packed out (pun intended?) the ad-space anyway. The practical impact in Romney's case is that he can now distance himself from the negative attacks made by the "independent" PACs, and Romney can use other people's money instead of only his own.

Citizen's United has evened up the score in some ways. Prior to this legislation, Gingrich (or Santorum) would have not been able to fight back because of a few wealthy patrons.

Anyway, on net I think we need to seriously reform our campaign financing laws. I'll defer to the SC and others on the legalities.

Personally I think the whole nomination process would be much better over a much shorter timeframe. It's ludicrous that this has been dragging on since November (in effect) and probably won't end until May or June. It would be far better if every state had to carry out their primary on the same day, or at least over a period of no more than a month, starting later in the year.

Sass, they try to constrict the timetable every year, and every year states jump the gun and compete to be first. The problem is that the national organisations can't do much more than restrict delegations for states who break the rules.

ray

It clearly is a system designed by history and committees and laws. No one would intentionally create such an approach

Maybe, but its only 50 years old. And the system of committing delegates based on primary votes only became a fixture on the Democratic side after Humphrey got the nomination over the fellow who won most of the primaries. (The anti war guy...) republicans only folowed the Dems lead in order to balance the increased interest that the new process of committing delegate by the Dems created in the public.
Absent the issue of costs, the issue of standardizing the rules surrounding the process would make the process more rational. And might not scare off so many qualified candidates. At least I get the sense that the current process has done exactly that, scared off men or women who might have taken a run if the process was less expensive, and took less time.
When only the very wealth, or those with ultra wealthy patrons, have access to the upper echelons of politics, the plutocracy is never challenged.

This conversation is interesting in that Jay Cost at the New Republic has been writing about it for about 3 or 4 months. The current system started in the 70's when far left Democrats wanted to take power away from the Establishment that ignored McGovern. Prior to this the nomination was decided by the delegates at the national convention. Picking of delegates varied by state with some caucuses, some primaries but the majority was state conventions of party official. The far left democrats wanted to reform this by having general public making the decision all the time.

Their intention was for there to be state level caucuses that allowed general voters pick the candidates. The far left reformers felt they would be able to have more influence in a grass roots caucus system.

However, the establishment were able to sort of hijack the reform committee and established mostly primaries which focused more on state wide organizations and less on grass roots local organization.

The Republicans sort of followed along by the mid 70's. Jay Cost writes that he thinks the old system was better because you always ended up with a concensus candidate as opposed to the current system where most candidates get the nomination with less then 50% of the popular vote.

archduke

Establishment that ignored McGovern

Wasn't it Eugene McCarthy? And if memory serves it really was started by Hubert Humphrey, in 68 after he won the nomination over McCarthy. The demonstrations of disaffected Democrats outside his convention had a telling effect... (sorry if I'm nitpicking)