Primary Retrospective

Well, it's all over but the crying.

There will be primaries for the next couple months, but barring some kind of miracle, John McCain will be the Republican nominee.

Before we transition to the general election, though, it's worth taking a look back on the primary campaign to see see if there is anything that can be learned.

Incredibly, McCain didn't win among self-identified Republicans in any state before super Tuesday. Enough independents and democrats voted in the primaries to swing the results. This should spur Republicans to ensure that next time Republicans decide the Republican nominee. No more open or semi-open primaries. There should be caucuses, conventions, or at a minimum closed primaries. Let the people who are actually active in the party decide the nominee. They're more likely to know something about the candidates other than what they heard in the liberal media.

The media is still hugely influential. Media exposure is worth millions of dollars to candidates. Every election, the media annoints frontrunners to be lavished with attention and mostly ignores the others. If real conservatives can get any coverage, it will be in articles talking about how they're extreme, controversial, long-shots who can't win.

Here's an idea. It's not the job of the media to predict the future. Report the facts; don't say who "can't win", or who is a frontrunner. The race anology doesn't make any sense. It would only make sense if candidates couldn't give back anything that they had. But is the case of poll standing this simply isn't true.

Once again, the fallacy of determining electability based on current poll standing can be seen. Rudy Giuliani led national polls for months. McCain did well, then collapsed to single digits, then made a comback. Fred Thompson briefly led. People should choose who to support based on who they like best, not who is most electable.

There were something like twenty Republican debates in the primary campaign. Did they serve any purpose? The only things that I can remember from them are Huckabee's joke that "Congress spends money like John Edwards in a beauty shop", Giuliani's misleading attack on Ron Paul, and Thompson's rebellion against the "show of hands" questions.

The debates were sponsored by television networks. They were mostly moderated by liberal reporters and newsmen. They mostly asked questions that didn't help Republicans decide. Remember that these were Republican debates. It's bad enough that liberals moderate general election debates. Is it too much to ask that Republicans moderate Republican debates?

Wouldn't you like to see a debate moderated by Ann Coulter, Pat Buchanan, and Phyllis Schlafly? Or how about Rush Limbaugh, Michael Reagan, and Glenn Beck? The networks have been able to pick the moderators because they broadcast the debates. But they don't have that many viewers. Why not have a conservative debate and broadcast it on the internet, if no network will broadcast it?

The good news is that newspapers continue to lose readers and television networks continue to lose viewers. More people get their news from the internet. The media's power to pick the Republican nominee may diminish. In the mean time, we need caucuses, conservative debates, and a commitment not to buy false notions of electability.