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Nov. 18, 2009
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Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review March 1, 2007 / 11 Adar, 5767

Only strong will survive this Big Bang

By Dick Morris & Eileen Mc Gann


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Nineteen states or more, with half of America's population, are moving to hold their presidential nominating primaries on Feb. 5, 2008, a mere three weeks after the Iowa caucuses and two weeks after the New Hampshire primary. In effect, we will now have a national primary and the presidential nominating season will last only three weeks from start to finish.


The effect of this gigantic sea change will be that whoever is the frontrunner in each party by the fall of 2007 will be virtually certain to win the nomination because only the frontrunner can possibly hope to amass enough money to compete in half the country at once. Nobody but the likely winner in each party will be able to compete at that level on Feb. 5.


Money will now be king. Nothing else will count very much. If you can afford to run a national campaign three weeks after the first caucus, you will win. If you can't, you're doomed. And the polling that designates a frontrunner now will do much to determine the nominee.


Big states, including California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, and North Carolina, are moving their primaries up to Feb. 5. They are going to be joined by a dozen smaller states: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Kansas, Missouri, Nevada (GOP only), New Mexico, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Utah. With half of the country — these states have a combined population of 145 million — voting on Feb. 5, many other states are sure to join the move and vote on that early date. After all, which state legislature wants to consign its voters to political irrelevance by voting in April or May? Before we are done, we will have America's first national primary on Feb. 5.


The financial demands of competing in each of these states are so onerous that only the richest of candidates can hope to win. That kind of money only goes to frontrunners. As a result, the process will be sufficiently top-heavy that the candidates who enjoy clear leads in the polls after the summer of 2007 will have a virtual lock on the nomination before anybody has cast a vote on anything in any state!


The danger, of course, is that the frontrunner will have been anointed without ever actually holding a primary. The effect will be to strip the primary process of its power — for the first time since it became the central way of selecting candidates in the aftermath of the 1972 reforms — and give the power to designate candidates to national public-opinion polls conducted among random representative samples of the voters. It is the triumph of the pollsters and fundraisers.


So how will we choose who are the frontrunners before anyone has voted? How will candidates impact the polls in order to swell their coffers? The early primary date means that the virtual primaries that will designate the frontrunners will be held on cable television, the Internet, and talk radio. The Republican Virtual Primary will be held on Fox News, the Limbaugh, Hannity, and other conservative talk radio shows, and the right-wing websites. The Democratic Virtual Primary will be held on National Public Radio, PBS, a handful of liberal talk shows, the network news programs, and websites like MoveOn.org where liberals congregate.


But what happens if the candidate chosen by this instant virtual lottery has feet of clay that only become evident when he or she actually runs for office in a real election? The testing, seasoning, vetting, and whittling-down of the field, which used to take five or six months, cannot now take place at all. We will never know how the candidates of each party will perform in an actual election. Voters in each party will be buying a car without being able to take it for a drive.


In 2004, when the process was so truncated that Kerry was chosen as the nominee in March, the Democratic Party found itself saddled with a deeply flawed candidate whose shortcomings were not evident until after the Democratic Convention had nominated him. Throughout the fall of 2004, Kerry's inability as a candidate became so glaringly obvious that Democrats didn't give him a second look when he sought their nomination again this year.


The early primary dates would seem, at the moment, to confer an enormous advantage on the frontrunners in each party: Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani. Their current leads in the polls and their consequent fundraising advantage make them stronger favorites than they might be if they had to run in a succession of primaries week after week.


So the new process, bequeathed to us by the advancing of the primary dates, will reward the rich, the pollsters, and the talk shows. And politics will never be the same again.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.


JWR contributor Dick Morris is author, most recently, of "Because He Could". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.) Comment by clicking here.



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