Soap Box

There's a lot to do with the election process that I'll admit I don't understand, and I'm sure that a lot of the more cosmopolitan minded pundits and professional practitioners of the art, science, three-ring circus or whatever modern day politics has evolved into, would scoff and say that it was because of my lack of a higher education and sophistication that prevents my enlightenment.

However, I submit that, a person doesn't need to be a Rhodes Scholar to see that both major political parties have built mechanisms into their primary processes that enable the backroom boys to insert their grubby fingers and affect the outcome.

In fact, the whole thing reminds me of a tax return; convoluted, difficult and confusing, with the rules changed at the whim of the party bosses and their puppet masters to favor or disfavor whatever candidates they deem worthy or otherwise.

We practice a constitutional republic form of government, but nowhere in the U.S. Constitution does it give power to a handful of power brokers and tag-along scalawags who sit behind the scenes and decide who the party candidate will be, completely circumventing the will of the voters.

It's only logical that when a candidate wins the majority of the votes in a state, they should take the majority of the delegates, but for some reason, known only to the old boys club, that's not necessarily how it happens.

It's a mystery to me how sometimes the winning candidate comes out with a few delegates and the rest are "unbound", and I think that means just about whatever the power players and major donors want it to mean.

And what in the name of Boss Tweed is a superdelegate? Can they fly or leap tall buildings in a single bound or are they just another tool in the establishment box, held in reserve and used to make sure the favorite son (or daughter) of the party hierarchy gets the nomination?

I don't think anybody in the brain trust of the Democratic Party ever thought that Bernie Sanders would give Mrs. Clinton the run that he has, forcing her to move further to the left than she already is and potentially moving even further to the left in the general election to attract Bernie's younger voters.

But, I'm sure they were never really concerned because even though Bernie has an attraction to a wider swath of voters than anybody would have thought, he's not exactly a Barack Obama who came from out of nowhere to steal the Clinton thunder in 2008. They may have had to do a little reshuffling and backed up a couple of times, but this one was always in the bag for Hillary, superdelegates notwithstanding.

On the Republican side, it's a different ball game.

After spending untold millions of dollars, they have watched their establishment candidates fall like tin ducks in a shooting gallery, with the exception of John Kasich who can't possibly have any skin left on his teeth, as precarious as his position has been.

That has left the Republican Party with two choices they are choking on, and though they have waited for decades for high profile charismatic candidates, now that that have a couple, they cringe in fear that if elected, he will disrupt the flow of business as usual, the mutual back scratching and back room deals that maintain the status quo.

A changing of the guard for both parties is way overdue and due to the popularity - or maybe I should say notoriety - of Hillary Clinton, it's probably not going to happen in the Democratic ranks this go around.

But, the Republicans are a horse of a different color, I believe that a brokered, or managed convention that ignores the two top candidates and tries to give the nomination to an insider, could rip the GOP asunder, leaving the good ole boys holding the bag, and an empty one at that.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

� Charlie Daniels

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