Quinnipiac poll: Santorum leads Ohio by 7

[August West]

...how it used to work before the parties decided to let chaos reign in the guise of The Voice of the People.

I've always considered $tevie's smoke filled backroom concept to have some merit and I will tell you why. It is not the unseemly sense of corruption that it engenders, but it is more, as she states, the guise of the voice of the people argument. As modern politics has more and more pandered to public opinion polling, something important has been lost, leadership. We no longer have leaders who will act out of strength of will and character, but politicians who listen to handlers and polls to arrive at decisions that are the most pragmatic for an upcoming election. They have no vision of leadership to a greater country, but, more akin to Wall street, a nose for the quarterly report.

[Grace62]

So taking the voting public out of the equation completely is the answer? I don't get that at all. We already have enough "smoke filled rooms" running the show, and over the past year the situation has gotten significantly worse. They are called super PACs. We don't have "party bosses" any longer, we have sugar daddies.

I've personally participated in the primary system, and it works. The challenges now are not party bosses calling the shots, it's the role of the media and of money.

The people who vote in the primary are the best informed, most involved, and most invested. Had "smoke filled rooms" determined the Democratic nominee in '08, it would have been Hillary Clinton. And I don't think she would have defeated McCain Palin, her negatives were above 50% and presidential candidates in the US don't win under those conditions, regardless of the intensity of their fan base.

And now the "smoke filled rooms" want to nominate Romney, and he may not be who the people of that party want. At least one caucus already appears to have been manipulated by the party powers that be (Maine.) We don't know who actually won that, and may never.

Brokered conventions, where the party machine picks the candidates, are perceived very negatively by the public and a sign that the party is doomed to lose in the general. I really don't think people want to go back to that.

And what are polls? Polls are the voice of the people. That voice is important in a democracy. Our current president actually tries to listen to that voice, I think that's a good thing. The best leaders are servants of the people.

[Dennis S]

"Had "smoke filled rooms" determined the Democratic nominee in '08, it would have been Hillary Clinton. And I don't think she would have defeated McCain Palin..."

Smoke-filled rooms would NEVER have picked Palin.

[Grace62]

Dennis S wrote:
"Had "smoke filled rooms" determined the Democratic nominee in '08, it would have been Hillary Clinton. And I don't think she would have defeated McCain Palin..."

Smoke-filled rooms would NEVER have picked Palin.

But they did my friend, they did. See what you get from that process?

No democratic (little d) process brought you Sarah Palin, voters never would have.

[Dennis S]

I see your point, Grace. Also, to my point, the king-makers in the old days would never have picked a Palin like they did in these days. The caliber of politicians has gone down.

[Grace62]

Dennis S wrote:
I see your point, Grace. Also, to my point, the king-makers in the old days would never have picked a Palin like they did in these days. The caliber of politicians has gone down.

They would never have picked a woman at all, that's for sure. But it was "smoke filled rooms" that brought you Hubert Humphrey, keep that in mind.

What measure are you using to determine this "caliber" of leaders?

We tend to idealize past leaders and minimize their mistakes and personal failures, failures that were never even reported on until recent decades.

I don't think our leaders are necessarily better or worse now, we just know a whole lot more about them.

PS: Here's the reassuring thing about Sarah Palin, at least to me. The highest office she has ever attained is Governor of one or our smallest states, population-wise. And she received 114K votes. And she didn't even make it in that job, she quit half way through. She maintained initial popularity by sending out record high oil profit-sharing checks to citizens. (Socialist!) Anway, now she earns a living as a pundit. Fine. But the people don't want her as a leader.

[$tevie]

Actually, assassination gave us Hubert Humphrey. Who I don't think was all that bad compared to a lot of the politicians out there today.

[Grace62]

$tevie wrote:
Actually, assassination gave us Hubert Humphrey. Who I don't think was all that bad compared to a lot of the politicians out there today.

Definitely not all bad, much to admire actually, but the wrong person to run in 1968. LBJ hand-picked him to be the nominee, as a reward for his loyalty to LBJ's policies. Including the ones that made no sense and were anathema to Humphrey, like support of the Vietnam war. Up to that point I would say I greatly admired the man.
With a better choice from Democrats, Nixon might never have become President.

[Grace62]

Back to Ohio.

Rasmussen (2008's "most reliable" polling firm) has Santorum up by 18 in Ohio.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_c...an_primary

[August West]

I think you all have missed my point about the dearth of leadership qualities in modern politicians. In my post, I did not point to corruption as the important quality missing, which I feel has been perhaps overstated in the responses, but I pointed to the lack of leadership and character of modern day politicians who seem to be mere followers of polls and not leaders of a country. There may have been unseemliness in those back rooms, but there was also a development of backbone and strength in the face of adversity.