Goodbye, Farewell and Amen

So, Romney is out. My voting choices for November have basically come down to the worst possible outcomes: McCain, Clinton, Obama, write-in, or third party. This is seriously what it's come down to? Ugh.

Of the choices, McCain falls in the category of "lesser evil," in that he's not going to give us national health care, pull us out of Iraq "within 60 days," as Hillary said, and has a fair chance of sticking a halfway decent judge on the Supreme Court. That said, I think he may actually do more damage to the Conservative cause than Clinton or Obama would. Simply put, I think they will both be disasters, and as the most recent mid-term elections showed us, a disaster by the party in power leads to a win-fall for the minority party. McCain, on the other hand, would be like a virus working on the inside. He could really mess things up (immigration, Law of the Sea Treaty, and potentially taxes for starters), and in doing so make Conservatives even more of a minority in the next mid-term elections.

Basically, he could turn out to be George W. Bush version 2.0, a man who ran as a Conservative and turned out to be a quasi-Socialist. Thanks, Georgie.

So, as for what I'm going to do come November, I have no idea. There's a good possibility that I'm going to write-in for Fred Thompson, simply because he's the person I wanted from the beginning, and I don't know that I can vote for any of these other ass-clowns. If not the write-in, I'll probably go with Joe Smith or whatever dude-without-a-chance-in-hell gets nominated for the Constitution party. I may even vote for Ron Paul if he runs as a Libertarian, but I'm not hanging any bedsheets from highway overpasses. Sorry, Ron, I'm just not that into you.

But, let's go back to Romney for a minute. I don't know whether his being a Mormon played into his defeat to any significant degree, but I don't think it helped him much (unless you happen to live in Utah, where I believe he carried 126% of the vote). I've had conversations with people that said they would not vote for him because he was a Mormon, which simply boggles my mind. If I was voting for a Preacher-in-Chief it'd be a different story, but I don't really see what economic policy, foreign policy, or most any of the other things a President really deals with have to do with the guy being a Mormon.

And let me just take a minute to say this... have any of us actually met a bad Mormon? Sure, we've met the annoying ones at our doorstep, but even they're always nice and respectful. But they're BIG on family (because they think they're going to spend eternity with these people, so they'd better like them!), and last I checked there was nothing wrong with that. I'm just saying, though, that Mormons are not generally blowing up abortion clinics, burning crosses on front lawns, or flying planes into buildings, all of it "in the name of God." They're pretty much knocking on doors in the name of God. Ooo, scary.

Anyway.

As I've listened and watched all this stuff happen during the primary, culminating in Romney dropping out and giving the nomination to McCain (sorry, Huckabee, but you've got no chance... and you're annoying), and I've come to a conclusion:

Our primary process is effin' ridiculous. Entire states, like Texas and Pennsylvania haven't even voted yet, and won't for some time. How do you narrow the field down to 3 candidates, combined, when millions of people in cities like Philly and Dallas and Pittsburgh and Houston haven't even cast a vote yet? And why on earth do Iowa and New Hampshire have some raised level of importance? Ridiculous.

I thought at first that having a national primary vote, like we do with the national election, would be a good idea. The more I thought about this, however, the more I realized it would only make it so those with a lot of money before any voting happened would be able to really run an effective campaign. So then I thought we should do it in regions. However, there should be no more than two weeks between primary votes.

This would give candidates a chance to win a region and use that momentum for fund raising and getting their name out, like they do with Iowa and New Hampshire and other early states, but it would also ensure that far more people get to vote before people are dropping out. It would also mean the candidates couldn't focus on just one group of voters and talk about the corn problems Iowa is having or how New Hampshire isn't exporting as many widgets as they used to (seriously, does New Hampshire do anything? I can't think of a single thing that comes from there), and they'd have to focus on regional problems in their campaigning.

Mostly, though, I'd like to be able to vote for who I want, and not who is left over once Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida are done sifting through things. Is that really too much to ask?

P.S. Bonus points to the people who know what the title of this post is from. Think TV shows.

Vote for Hillary!

COMRADES!