However, since we are on the subject, let us consider the presidential primary season, in general. After all, this process is precisely what saddled the United States with Obama and McCain. While it's a great game to the parasitic consultant cadres, gaming this system with dreams of becoming high-paid legends dancing in their heads, I seriously propose tossing the whole presidential primary system on the grounds that it is both wrong and illegal.
Are the political parties private or public institutions? When asked, their representatives will insist they are private. Further, there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution about political parties except in the literacy and poll tax amendments, where the word "primary" is inserted. Beyond this, the presidential primary is a cobbling together of latter day traditions and arcane state policies, such as "bragging rights," etc., that have the appearance of being as old and revered as Mount Vernon, when most of it came into view with Estes Kefauver in 1952. It was after Lyndon Johnson won the New Hampshire Primary in 1968, and in the years immediately afterward that Republicans were compelled by reforms mostly instituted by the Old New Left in the Democrat Party to hold their delegate selection processes at the same times and places. You can fill in the blanks yourself.
The point is this: no State (let alone the Federal government) should spend a single dime of taxpayer money "aiding" the delegate selection process for a private institution. It comes might close to violation of the First Amendment, it seems to me, but beyond this, it's just wrong. Does it make sense to you that, in North Carolina, for example, a Democrat-run state government decides how the state's Republicans choose their candidates and delegates?
Using the example of North Carolina, again, by the time they held their presidential primary in 2008 both Obama and McCain were essentially already de facto nominees of their parties, as all but the most stalwart in both the "major" national parties had already exited the stage long before. Thus not only Republicans but African Americans in North Carolina had their votes submerged into the larger voting strength of New Hampshire. (Cough, cough.) They were denied the right to an opportunity to select a candidate of their own choosing, and, thus, the whole presidential primary system is illegal, a violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (cough.)
Nothing in the make up of the Republican Party or the Republic requires them to allow an inherently hostile entity, like a state government, to decide how they will pick their nominee.
You want more people at your precinct caucuses? You want more attendance at the state convention? You want the opportunity for delegates (who are not getting a golden ticket to attend a media event) to hammer out a nominee?
Bring back the Smoke-filled room, Amigos. Disband the presidential primary process and eliminate this basketball tournament and meat parade farce that allows the most shallow to chose our nominees. Why should New Hampshire, and a handful of other states with wide-open primaries, rigged and run by busloads of imported goons, decide who our Favorite Son or Daughter is to be?
Face it. All the speculation this time two years ago gave John McCain the most outside shot of becoming the nominee. This elaborate game, regulated and run by state governments, is a sham. Instead of gaming and speculating, we need to toss the entire babe out with the bathwater.
The primaries are the real culprit.