I wandered by Tamara's place earlier, and this post got me to thinking.
and what's gonna happen to the finger-wagging, lecturing, "Lesser Of Two Evils" voters if this election comes down to McCain v. Edwards or Clinton v. Giuliani, and there is no lesser evil? Are we justified in voting third party then? Or should we just say "screw it", and stay home?
I'm an Independent. That is, I'm not registered with either party. Upside: I get to proudly say, "I'm an Independent!" and I'm not on the party call lists (which doesn't really help, because Mr. Abby is a registered Republican, so they still call). Downside: In most states, including Florida, I can't vote in primaries.
I think most of us can look at the lists of Presidential hopefuls now and see someone we don't hate. The downside of our (mostly) closed primary system is that the True Party Believers pick their party's nominee.
Too often, that leads to each party nominating the candidate who:
A) Spends the most time pandering to their base
B) Has the most disposable income
So how about if we "tuned in" Independents pick a candidate and register with a party? Then we get at least some say in picking the nominee (if we live in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, etc - this is another major flaw in the primary system. How can someone be "hopeless" after NH and IA? I dunno - but it happens).
I'm not clear on this thought - I'm thinking out loud tonight. But I've had about enough of watching the Democrats nominate the individual who promises to hand out the most money to the "party base," while watching the entire Republican machine spend a zillion dollars to find the guy who can sound most indignant about prayer in school.
We've GOT to be able to make this primary system work better. Any ideas? We're still a ways out, but once I know where I'll be living for the primary season, I think I'm going to look into registering. Which party depends on what I think of the available candidates at that point.
More food for thought.
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