Is it worth the money being spent on electing a candidate?
According to CNN.com http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/04/16/ ... index.html at the end of March 2008 Clinton had raised $36 million, Obama $18.2 mil, Edwards $13mil, Romney $21mil, Giulani $14 mil and McCain $13 mil. A total of $115.2 million. And that is just to be chosen by their respective party to run as President. And I imagine that's only part of what will be eventually spent.
Wouldn't it be a better system if the Republican Senators and Representatives voted for candidates who nominated and that person would be the Repubican candidate and the same for the Democrats.

The nominated person would then be free of the baggage that must be owed to large contributors and would actually represent the stated policy views of each party.

Go question and NO it is not worth the money. Basically, the money is used to make the candidate more popular and there is the eventual elected pres. the one that is the most popular. I have heard that there is a possibility that the total amount spent by all candidates could run as high as $1 billion.

Since American Idol gets more votes than a presidential election, maybe we should explore using that format to elect a pres. Just a thought!

I doubt many of the candidates would agree to an American Idol format. If they did that would mean that they have to be live in front of all of America on a regular basis. There are too many chances for them to slip up. It's ok to have a live debate because they can usually prepare months in advance, but going live with less than a few days to prepare? That isn't going to happen.

If you used senators and representatives then it'd just be the same thing only instead of money they'd probably use political favors instead which usually equate to money eventually. I say leave it up to the parties to decide.

Wassup Rupchuk? Nice to see ya again. The problem I have is that I cannot find anything about the two party system that I trust, so I look for alternative ways. I mean look at the parties, they are so similar now that it is hard to tell one from the other. The candidates are just different sides of the same coin.

Yea I'm on more now since I moved to Kentucky, not a lot to do here at the moment.

Anyways I hate the two party system. It's almost as bad as having a one party system. It probably wasn't so bad in the beginning because there was a lot of cooperation and understanding as far as making America great. The two parties and their members were too busy to play politics because they were working to make America better. Now we have people from both sides playing the politics instead of doing what is good for America.

A solid third party would make things better in my opinion.

Depending on what happens at the Dem convention, there could very well be a move for a more solid third party.

There is already a move to resurrect the Progressive Party.