Right Wing Nut House

My latest column is up at Pajamas Media. This one is about the decison of South Carolina to move its primary up so that it can still be “First in the South” by beating Florida who themselves moved their primary to top South Carolina.

If this keeps up, we may have Christmas Caucuses in Iowa:

It has even been suggested that presidents be nominated the old fashioned way – at the party conventions. This is how they were chosen for the 150 years prior to the party reforms initiated in the 60s and 70s which were supposed to make the process more “inclusive” and “transparent.” We’ve got inclusiveness and transparency coming out of our ears and look where we are now – Santa Claus and Hillary Clinton coming down the chimney together. Have the reforms improved the quality of candidates? Some would argue that the old wise men of the two parties who used to meet in smoke filled rooms to choose a nominee got it right more often than not. A debatable point to be sure and not relevant when discussing a process that cries out for openness and as much democracy as this poor republic can handle.

We Americans, being inveterate tinkerers, experiment with this primary process every four years. But instead of fixing the machine, we’re like the guy who takes the entire gizmo apart and looks helplessly at the pile of junk on his workbench without a clue how to put it all back together. He tries gamely, hammering away trying to make parts fit together that have no relationship with one another. When he’s finished, there are always a few screws and nuts he somehow couldn’t find room for.