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From Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_(United_States)_presidential_primaries,_2008]

Delegate selection

The Republican National Committee (RNC) allocates delegates to states and territories in four categories. Three district level delegates are given to states for each of their congressional districts. Ten additional at-large delegates are given to each state regardless of population. States earn additional bonus delegates for having U.S. Senators and governors from the Republican Party, sending a majority-Republican delegation to the U.S. House, maintaining partial or total Republican control of the state legislature, or casting a majority of their 2004 electoral vote for George W. Bush. Finally, each state automatically receives three party delegates: their two RNC delegates and the chairman of the state Republican party. Territories are only eligible to send at-large and party delegates. The rules and numbers of delegates are spelled out in the Republican party’s Call for the Convention, which was published on November 9, 2007.

Unlike the Democratic Party, which mandates a proportional representation system for delegate selection within a state, the Republican Party has no such restriction. For states with primaries, some states choose to use the “winner-take-all” method to award delegates within a state, while others do winner-take-all within a congressional district, and still others use the proportional process. Unlike the Democratic Party, where pledged delegates support the candidate whom they are pledged, state party by-laws determine whether each delegate is pledged and for how many ballots.

In caucus states, most state parties use a two pronged process. A straw poll, often called a presidential preference poll, is conducted of the attendees at the caucus. The results are released to the media and published on the state party website. Delegates are then elected to the county conventions. It is at the county conventions that delegates are elected to state conventions, and from the state convention to the national convention. At each level, delegates may be bound or unbound to a candidate. If unbound, delegates are not obligated to follow the results of the presidential preference poll. Thus, all estimates of delegates from caucus states are dependent on state party by-laws.

Do the Rs have a similar type system? Probably not or she would have mentioned that, right?

Question: Did the Republican and Democratic Parties exist at the founding of the country, or did they get organized later?
The answer, of course, is that they got organized later - and that, comes to that, the Big Two are not the only parties on the ballot. And that leads to another question: When a new party is organized, how does it retain its character? If someone founds a "Right To Life" party, what prevents a bunch of Democrats from simply joining it, and co-opting it? So that it looks like it opposes abortion, but it actually cross-endorses candidates who support it?
When you look at it that way, you realize that you don't want Democrats and Independents deciding who will be the Republican nominee - and that you therefore don't actually want the Republican Party to be fully democratic. It becomes an issue of the right of free association - you have the right not to associate with people you do not want to associate with.
And of course that gets tricky, because then you sound like you want to discriminate against blacks, for example. But at some point, somebody has to have the authority to say who is not a Republican.