Dear Republicans, Obama is going to win, so you might as well nominate someone you like

[Renew Deal]

The 2011 republican primary is unremarkable. The guy "next in line" is leading in the polls because he is better organized and has more money. Other than that, he's a terrible candidate. He doesn't believe in what you believe in and he doesn't have the guts to tell you. At least Huntsman has the guts to tell you what he thinks. Mitt tells you what he thought before and what he is told he needs to think now, but it's plainly obvious that he doesn't buy into all your BS. He's a manufactured candidate. A RW frankenstein. He hasn't seen a room of people he couldn't pander to.

My advice is to nominate someone you like. Do you want to spend the next 10 months defending Romney's lies, flip flops, double statements, etc.? Don't you want a candidate that believes your BS? Do you want to lose with a right of center panderer? Pick someone you like and have fun for the next 10 months. Maybe pick Santorum. He's not as nasty as Gingrich, not as aloof as Perry, not as paranoid as Ron Paul. He believes your crap a little too much. You won't have to wince every time you see him speak. You'll feel a lot better about yourselves when it's over.

[William769]

1. I don't think they like any of them.

Most of all themselves.

[moriah]

4. That seems to be the consensus amongst my Republican coworkers...

... that they all suck.

It's actually a rather interesting mix we have on the weekends/second shift. We all did the political compass test and the most conservative amongst us scored in the dead center of the compass (leading us to suspect some liberal bias to the questions, given he's pro-life, pro-war, and anti-welfare, tho can at least talk about it without frothing at the mouth). We then have a Tea Party/gun-toting/"Don't Tread On Me" sticker having guy who was brought up in the middle of the woods in Arkansas, a California college traditional liberal, and me (slightly to the right of the other True Blue Liberal, I supported Hillary in 2008 tho I gave in to the inevitable with grace).

Our boss walked in while we were having political conversation and I was quick to speak up and say, "But it's friendly, I promise! And we keep the door shut!"

[Old and In the Way]

2. The party seems to be an amalgam of special interestvand single interest voting blocks.

Republicans have spent decades slcing and dicing the electorate. They've capitalized on the politics of divisiveness. I just wonder if they've reached the point where their base is too fragmented and incapable of compromising amongst themselves.

You have Big Finance, Christian Fundies, Sons/Daughters of the Confederacy, Homophobes, Austrian Economics fanatics, States Rightists, Islamophobes, and Racists/Bigots. Each block can fully support one, maybe 2 candidates, but not #3, #4, #5. So I wonder if there is any person that can unite the republican Party? Now, or in the future....

[RZM]

3. Same as the Democratic Party

That's what you get with a two party system. Were we to fracture into a parliamentary system, you'd have many parties. Here's a few off the top of my head (with potential leaders in parentheses):

The Progressive party (Grayson)
The Socialist party (Sanders)
The 'rump' center-left Democratic Party (Obama)
The Black National Party (Sharpton)
The Hispanic Coalition Party (Guitierrez)
The Libertarian party (Paul)
The Christian conservative party (Santorum)
The Conservative-Neocon Party (Jeb)
The Nativist Party (King)
The Centrist Bloc party (Too many to mention)

Some would be very small, but they'd be there. And so on and so on. It really is a big tent on both sides.

[Renew Deal]

5. I don't think you need a parlimentary system to have multiple parties.

Americans choose to support 2 parties.

[MineralMan]

6. We already have several parties. It's just that we don't vote

for their candidates. Aside from Ross Perot, third party candidates fare very poorly at election time. They exist, but don't elect. Changing that will be a very difficult task, indeed.

[zipplewrath]

7. We have many parties

But in the absence of a parlimentary system, we have primaries instead. Then we elect them to run under one of the party banners.

We have regional variations on our two basic parties that show many of the same characteristics as distinct parties.