Posted by
RightTeacher on Saturday, January 26, 2008 1:04:51 PM
This last in a series of posts is a modest proposal for the next election. I have a better idea for the primaries for next time.
Most republicans would rather vote for a republican for president that for a democrat. Likewise, most democrats would rather vote for a democrat than for a republican. More so for democrats, I think. This means that the top issue should be electability. This is usually considered a secondary consideration or an insubstantial issue. It might simply lead one to vote for a more moderate candidate that might have more appeal for independents. But I think that if a candidate is strong enough, he (she?) ought to be able to win over independents. Nevertheless, who attends the inaugural, democrat or republican, is the crucial question and we vote in the primaries for the person we think has the best chance of beating the other guys in the general.
The debates in the primaries should not be separate press conferences for the dems and the reps. We should still have one-on-one debates, as I suggested above, but this time between one democrat and one republican. We would have a debate with each democrat going up against each republican.
This leads to a large number of debates, but how many have we had so far this primary season? Have multiple debates during one telecast and we could go through all of the combinations in fewer telecasts than we have had so far.
The next time republicans ask, who would be most strong in a competition against either Hillary or Obama? We would already have the answer.