Dogs and Cats Playing Together

Remember when I said having PA be uncommitted at the national GOP convention was a political 80% issue?  For a review of what I mean by 80% issue click on the video below to learn from Newt.

It appears both Arlen Specter  [HT Pennsyltucky] and Rick Santorum believe PA’s delegates ought to remain uncommitted.

If this issue can bring concurrence between those two, I think we should take it to the middle east when we’re done here.

Change The System From In The System

I know more about how the GOP works.  Know what, though?  I am a committeeman, and it’s all still pretty vague to me.  Here’s an e-mail I just sent to the head of the Chester County GOP to get a handle on how best to send real uncommitted delegates to the national GOP convention.  It distills down my understanding of the system as it stands right now.  As I learn more, so will you!  Funny how the process of how we elect the president of a free nation needs distilling.

Skip:

I seem to recall we nominated you as a delegate last week.  Who did we nominate along with you?

The reason for my question is I am really unhappy with the way the presidential primary system in our country works.  I tried talking to my state legislators about moving ours up so our votes could be meaningful, but that was like beating my head against a wall. [see post tags for list of who I tried to persuade on the matter]

Besides, I eventually came to the conclusion that simply moving ours forward is not so much a solution, as it makes a dysfunctional system worse.  It occurred to me, though, one way to at least draw attention to the issue would be to have Pennsylvania’s delegation to the GOP convention not only arrive uncommitted in theory, but in actual practice as well.

This is an idea already floated by former Senator Santorum, and I feel it is something on which we should follow up, even if there’s no real chance any more of our national convention being “brokered”.

What are your thoughts on this?

PA GOP delegates, you see, are technically sent as uncommitted.  The helpful op-ed from Rick Santorum I mention can be found here.  This is apparently not how it goes down in practice, though, and I need to learn more about how and why.  Skip, though, seems like a decent and rational fellow, and he is one of the two people the Chester County GOP has nominated to be delegates at the national convention.  I’m sure he can explain it to me, and could perhaps also be persuaded to join the cause.

Live In the Solution

This is no time for nihilism or defeatism.  As this blog will spend a fair amount of time bashing all the candidates currently running for President, I should make this clear:  The country has muddled through worse, and all the current candidates have something to recommend them.

The problem is, on the GOP side supporters of allof the original five or so original candidates had the suspicion that we could have done better.  As for the Dems, I suggest if the Clinton machine does in Obama you will see an eruption the American Right is unable to muster.

The first step I think we need to take to begin solving this problem is changing our Byzantine and financially ruinous primary scheme.  The best thing we can do now, it seems to me, is to encourage all remaining primary voters to find a way to select “uncommitted” or “none of the above” on their presidential primary ballots.