Primary in Wisconsin

Wisconsin has an open primary system. This seems somewhat crazed to me: why should non-party members be allowed to specify who the party is going to nominate? I’m neither Republican nor Democrat, but I can walk in and fill out a ballot to say who I think they should nominate. (“Vote for only one”)

Still, they both agreed on these rules, so I suppose they think the potential biasing of results is compensated for by the possible additional votes in the main election.

I doubt that anybody except New Hampshire and Iowa hotel owners and TV station owners are really happy with the primary season this year. Most of the candidates have already dropped out by the time Wisconsin rolls around, too. There’s not a lot of choice left by now. The Hillary/Obama contest is still fairly tight, and I’ve no good sense of which way people are going to vote. Madison seems to have Obama-mania, but that’s only a small and not very representative part of the whole state.

I have about 6 choices left, I think.

Vote for one of the dropouts. Quixotic, but it does send a little signal. Tiny signal. Lost in the noise.

Ron Paul. Hardly. I’m not Libertarian and he has some unfortunate connections with wackos.

Hillary Clinton. Is this going to be another package deal with Bill? Anybody seriously think he won’t be hanging out in the Oval Office? She comes with other baggage too: corruption, for instance. And she seems to carry the usual “leftist” attitudes about social policy, from abortion to that damned interfering village of the bogus proverb. She’s a quite skillful liar, though not quite in Bill’s league—and that is sometimes a useful trait in a wartime president.

Mike Huckabee Doesn’t seem to understand much about economics, and his analysis of Middle Eastern affairs seems naïve. Trying to get clear reporting about how his religious views inform his politics is a hopeless exercise: reporters are hopelessly superficial. He actually has administrative experience.

John McCain I’m seriously annoyed with his “Incumbent Protection Act,” but to be fair the majority of the House and Senate voted for it, so the blame has to be shared. He’s the only candidate left with the vaguest idea of what the war is about. He has a deep love for being a maverick, which is going to be tough to satisfy if he winds up the leader. And he seems to have succeeded in cheesing off quite a number of the leaders of economic and social conservative groups, which complicates politics after the election if he wins.

Barack Obama He’s solidly in deep left field on cultural and economic issues, culpably ignorant about war, and has virtually no experience. Not a chance. I haven’t forgotten about his Pakistan remarks, and neither have they. Of all the stupid things to say… And his “Patriot Company” proposal is a frighteningly open-ended bid for control of the economy. I’ll not say he’d use it badly, but this puts the tools in place for anybody to mishandle.

Important issues: the war (rules out Paul, Obama, and probably { I-can’t-tell-if-she’s-lying } Clinton right off the bat), the economy (rules out Paul, Obama, Huckabee, and probably Clinton), immigration, abortion, energy policy… Nobody fits all the criteria, unfortunately. Which is usually the case.

Probably McCain.