R.W.Dale said:
The problem with this is our dysfunctional fractured primary system has a bunch of liberal blue states selecting the candidate for the red ones. You literally have states selecting the republican they'd want if they weren't going to vote Democrat by default.
For the life of me I cannot understand why more people don't see this fundamental malfunction of our political system
I haven't got to vote in a primary that wasn't a forgone conclusion in the 15yrs I've been a voter yet
There are only about a half-dozen states where an individual's vote truly counts in Presidential elections. It doesn't really matter how appealing a candidate is in New Jersey or Texas. New Jersey is going to vote blue and Texas is going to vote red except in landslide elections, like 1984 or 1988.
And it doesn't matter then, either.
For a number of reasons, New Jersey has some
very conservative politicians, just not ones that can be elected to statewide office. A good example might be Scott Garrett, who is one of the most conservative members of Congress. ("Garrett is considered the most conservative member of the New Jersey delegation, as he has received perfect 100 ratings from the American Conservative Union throughout his career" and "a 92% Rating from the National Rifle Association".)
Another NJ conservative would be former Bogota mayor Steve Lonegan who is running for Frank Lautenberg's Senate seat. The primary election is
today -- and Lonegan should easily win the Republican nomination. Lonegan ran against Christie in the Republican gubernatorial primary in 2009. Christie won with 55 percent of the vote. Lonegan garnered 42 percent. We'll see how this all works out. Christie pulled out all the stops for this special election. He scheduled an actual primary election, rather than leaving the choice of candidates to the two party's leadership in smoke-filled rooms. He scheduled a special election on October 16 -- which is a
Wednesday, and just a few weeks before the Governor's election on November 5th.
If any election was ever designed to favor a conservative candidate in New Jersey, it's a special election on a Wednesday a few weeks before a general election. Only the core party voters are likely to make it to the polls. Of course, Christie didn't do this because he wanted to help Lonegan -- although he wouldn't be unhappy if a Republican won. He did it because he didn't want to appear on the same ballot with Newark Mayor Cory Booker, who is the presumptive Democrat nominee, and is the other rock star in NJ politics.
So far the polling doesn't look too good for Lonegan.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/ep..._special_election_lonegan_vs_booker-3938.html But since the special election is on a Wednesday in October which has never been done before in this state this is really sailing in uncharted waters.
McCain and Romney probably had about as much appeal to swing voters in the half-dozen competitive states as was possible. The problem for McCain was that the US economy was in a downward spiral in November 2008 and the Republicans were the incumbent party. The problem for Romney was that the US economy appeared to be on an upward trajectory in November 2012 and the Democrats were the incumbent party. Of course, Romney can be accused of being an out-of-touch patrician with a liberal record as Governor of Massachusetts who ran an awful campaign, but IMO that wasn't his main problem. I believe that if the 2012 election had been held 12 months earlier or 12 months later, the outcome might have been different.
There are many New Jersey towns in the more conservative New Jersey counties that vote well to the right of Texas in national elections. Conservatives in blue states are as conservative as conservatives anywhere, and they're the ones who are voting in the primaries. But they also like to win elections and so are likely to "satisfice" vs "optimize" their primary candidate choices when they think it can make some difference.
