[Hoot Gibson]

How did the GOPe screw it up Hoot? Republicans started with 17 candidates who ran their campaigns and the people responded. The voting process has narrowed the field to 3, a front runner which the GOPe are doing their best to thwart in the person of Donald Trump, with Ted Cruz in the rocking chair, that leaves the one-state-winning mushroom from Ohio at the back door.

By letting Democrats help select the Republican nominee. Except, The GOPe intended for Democrats who voted in the open primaries of the southern states to help nominate Jeb Bush. When he was eliminated from the race, most Democrats went to Trump and Rubio, Carson, and Cruz split the conservative, mostly Republican votes.

Now, most big primaries remaining are closed, but in states less conservative than the southern states. Trump was just in the right place at the right time. Nobody expected Jeb to be such a dud of a candidate. The GOPe screwed up because by rigging the nomination process against conservative candidates, they will probably end up nominating a liberal Democrat.

Republicans should choose the Republican nominee. I have always opposed open primaries and always will.

Another thing that the GOPe has done in an effort to nominate RINOS is to distribute delegates in the southern primaries (except Florida) proportionally and to make most of the less conservative states' primaries winner take all.

Finally, in this particular election cycle, the GOPe set rules to allow as many as 10 candidates on the debate stage at one time. This limited the ability of former national debate champion and world debate championship semi-finalist, Ted Cruz, to exploit his advantage in that area. You can bet if Jeb Bush was a world class debater, the rules would have been much different.

Now that the field has been whittled to two candidates who have not been mathematically eliminated from the race, Donald Trump is refusing to debate Cruz. I don't blame him. In a one-on-one debate, hiding behind name calling and insults would not be very effective and people would undoubtedly notice that Trump does not possess the kind of knowledge that Americans take for granted in presidential candidates. Even with prepared notes, in his speech to AIPAC, Trump made reference to Palestine, a nation that has not existed since 1948.

In summary, the GOPe screwed up because by trying to stack the deck against conservatives, they opened the door for Donald Trump. A large number of conservatives will never vote for Trump, but even if they all voted for Trump and he won, the GOPe would still be the big loser.