Political Parties are private clubs. Primaries are taxpayer-funded elections where private clubs choose their representation in General Elections. So, members of Party A pay for Party B to choose their candidate and those not affiliated with any Party pay for them all. Instead of passing a taxpayer-funded Constitutional Amendment to force private clubs to allow non-members to vote in their internal selection process, why not adopt a system where the private clubs pay for their own processes? [More]
WarOnGuns Correspondent Scott Jensen offer an idea I’ve never considered before, and while addressed to Oklahoma legislators in response to SQ 835 seems universally applicable.
I’ve pointed out a failing of open primaries before and don’t see either party getting their snouts out of the public trough without powerful carrot/stick incentives, but Scott’s ideas are unique and deserves wider consideration.
I’m intrigued. What about you?
The selection of candidates was forced out of those “smoke filled rooms” and into the “light of day” primaries by the same folks who want to turn the Republic into a democracy. Yet when push came to shove, Princess Nancy declared that Willie Brown’s former mistress had won a primary open to only the party big-wigs. IOW, you can rest assured they’ll continue to tinker with the system until it gives them the results they want (demand?) whether the voters agree with them or not.
Yet, at the end of the day……
When democracy becomes tyranny, I still get to vote!” — Mike Vanderboegh
dds,
If you were to generalize your comment and put it into the language of days gone by, it would sound a LOT like how former President George Washington warned us about partisan politics in his farewell address:
https://www.mountvernon.org/education/primary-source-collections/primary-source-collections/article/washington-s-farewell-address-1796
“I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, …warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally.
This spirit, …is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, … is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty….
Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind, (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight,) the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
It serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.”