Now that the Republican field has dwindled, some are coming to the conclusion that Mitt Romney can't win (Dick Morris) and that John McCain ain't so bad after all (and Romney can't win) (Ben Domenech).
I'm not convinced that Mitt Romney can't win, however. Every frontrunner in the race at this point has an implausible candidacy in one way or another, from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama to John McCain to Mitt Romney. I would have said a year ago that McCain couldn't win in the primaries, and so would most conservatives.
I wonder how big a factor in McCain's current frontrunner status have been votes for him from Democrats and independents the open primaries, as well as in primaries that are legally closed, but not necessarily so in practice (Florida comes to mind).
As I've argued before, open primaries are a bad idea:
What's the point of listening to campaign debates, studying the candidates' positions on the issues, and campaigning for candidates, if you're going to let the opposing party -- or whoever walks in off the street -- vote to choose your party's candidate for you? You might as well roll the dice and be done with it.
In Florida, Democrats knew that Florida's votes would not count toward delegates in the Democratic primary. If I were a Florida Democrat, I might have been tempted to switch my registration 30 days before the election so I could "help" Republicans choose "their" candidate. I am sure that some in Florida did just that. Whether it was enough to make the margin of victory, I don't know.
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