A representative nominee

Sandy Levinson over at Balkinization has a really excellent point about the nomination process that got us here:

Republicans were praised for quickly wrapping up their contest by virtue of having adopted a first-past-the-post winner-take-all allocation for most of its primaries, whereas the Democrats adopted a proportional representation system. Thus John McCain won all of Missouri's delegates by winning, I believe, around 34% of the vote (with Mike Huckabee coming in second with around 31%). Those dumb Democrats, it was suggested, were simply creating a divided party well into June (and beyond?), while John McCain had all those months to preside over a unified party and then take advantage of Democratic ineptitude.

Except, of course, it didn't work out that way.

[snip]

It will be interesting to see what lessons the Republican Party learns from a process that gave them John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Interesting, to say the least.