{"id":8545,"date":"2012-08-04T09:56:54","date_gmt":"2012-08-04T16:56:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=8545"},"modified":"2012-08-04T10:00:24","modified_gmt":"2012-08-04T17:00:24","slug":"why-to-keep-them-closed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/04\/why-to-keep-them-closed\/","title":{"rendered":"Why to Keep Them Closed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Does anyone remember Alvin Greene?  He was the Democratic nominee for the Senate from SC in 2010.  What made him so remarkable is that, on an idiot scale of 1 to 10, ten being a total idiot, Greene would have scored a 38.  As much as I hoped that would never happen again, it has, only worse.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"4Clayton\"The party of Cordell Hull, Estes Kefauver and Al Gore Sr. and Jr. won’t have a standard-bearer — or at least not one it can stomach — in Tennessee’s next U.S. Senate race.<\/p>\n

Less than 24 hours after a man espousing conservative and libertarian views surprised the state’s political scene by winning the Democratic nomination<\/a>, the Tennessee Democratic Party disavowed him, saying he’s part of an anti-gay hate group<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The party said Friday that it would do nothing to help Mark Clayton, 35, who received nearly twice as many votes as his closest challenger in Thursday’s seven-candidate primary, winning the right to challenge Republican U.S. Sen. Bob Corker in November… [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <The Tennessean<\/a>><\/p>\n

Picture credit: CBS<\/a><\/font><\/p>\n

Even the article does not present Clayton in all his Republican glory, but Rachel Maddow did.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/font><\/p>\n

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n

The party claims that voters just voted for the top name on the ballot.  Rachel did not offer a precise explanation.  I just can’t believe that many people could have been so disrespectful of their right to vote as to choose a candidate only because he was first on the list.  Primary voters are the ones that care most.  But there is an alternate explanation.  I cannot prove it, but if fits the facts better than the official reason.  Seventeen states use an open primary system<\/a>.  That is a system, in which any voter can vote in any primary, regardless of political affiliation.  Tennessee is one of those states.  With Harold Ford’s Republican nomination locked-in.  There was nothing to prevent Republicans from voting in the Democratic primary to sabotage the Democratic nomination.  In my opinion, that is most likely what happened.<\/font><\/p>\n

I have long held that primaries should be closed.  As preferable as it may seem to allow anyone to vote anywhere, I consider it tantamount that members of political parties be able to pick their own candidates, free of interference from people with no scruples.  That’s why to keep them closed.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Does anyone remember Alvin Greene?  He was the Democratic nominee for the Senate from SC in 2010.  What made him so remarkable is that, on an idiot scale of 1 to 10, ten being a total idiot, Greene would have scored a 38.  As much as I hoped that would never happen again, it has, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8545\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}