with whichever candidate won the nomination. and it kept going oin because they both had a lot of supporters and huge turnout at events.

with the republican primary the problem is lack of support for candidates. people getting turned off by one and moving on to the other one until that one does something stupid and they forget for a short time what the other one did and on and on.

This cast of losers cannot get a hundred people to show up at many venues.

...than in any other US Presidential Primary in history.

So, uh, not the same.

did not drop like a rock during the 2008 primary. I do not believe Hillary's did either. Romney's are in a nose-dive.

2008 was Obama vs Clinton with Edwards getting some substantial votes. Clinton was the expected nominee prior to the primaries BUT Obama was never described as the Anti-Clinton candidate.

Conversely Romney was the expected nominee prior to the primaries and we have had a slew of Anti-Romney candidates, Bachmann, Perry, Trump, Santorum.

To put it into perspective, the '08 race would have had Biden, Dodd, Edwards, Obama, and Bill Maher taking turns at top of the polls with all of them falling back and having Clinton back into the nomination. How do you think that would have been presented by the press?

Hillary and Obama were relatively close on the issues and the attacks that they used on each other were all things that were going to come up in the general election one way or another.

By contrast, Rick Santorum is making Romney say all sorts of things to appeal to the lunatic fringe that Romney is going to wish he hadn't had to say.

cry if they want to.

There is no real comparison, however if the Esteemed Mr. McConnell wants to rationalize one, he is free to do so.

The candidates and the party are damaged goods and will likely not recover this election cycle.

Biggest difference is that both Obama and Clinton supporters were incredibly passionate about their chosen candidate. I know I was worried at the time due to a lot of the negativity, but you can't deny that both sets of voters were incredibly devoted to their candidate. It was ultimately just a matter of bringing them together behind the eventual candidate, which happened because Dems knew they had to win that election no matter what.

I just don't see ANY passion ANYWHERE for the GOP field. Maybe Paul, but he's not even close to being a frontrunner. Without the passion, it strikes me that they could wind up just wandering off into the sunset, bored with the whole thing and looking to 2016.

Say what you will about the Obama-Clinton primary, but no matter who we supported, we were FIRED UP about them. I just don't see anything like that for Romney or anyone else. At least in 2008 the right had Palin getting them all psyched (because McCain sure didn't get 'em going). Right now, there's nothing to like on the right. Nothing.

Of course, they live in their Fox News "bubble" so I don't expect them to be in touch with reality anyway.

The obvious difference, this time, is that while the clowns are busy elbowing each other in the Nash, the President gets to do his job--which it turns out he is excellent at doing--while taking in at least as much cash for the short-season general election as the eventual clown-winner will have, and carefully noting all of the valuable and damaging information the primary candidates reveal about one another, while quietly building a unified network of campaign staff.

The level of vitriol in the Clinton-Obama race was exceeded by these chumps six months ago, and it's not going to stop until April. All of their messages are targeted at a naive and nearly delusional sub-set of the population who do not respond well to logic and reason, so the messages themselves cannot be logical or reasonable.

Clinton and Obama were hotly debating how to fix the country. These clowns, on the other hand, are talking every single damned day about outlandish, ruinous ideas that have no appeal to the public at large and no applicability in the real world.

They. Are. Doomed. Unless they return to their predictable ways and break the law to get what they want.

Seriously, this is one of the most absent-minded professor comments McConnell has ever made. Has he even looked at the primary results lately? Their own base doesn't care who they have running for President. They don't care about them anymore. Faux Snooze isn't popular with them anymore. Rush Limbaugh can't even bear water for a rightwing high school team anymore!

And yet, Turtle Man is their minority leader in the Upper House of Congress.
No wonder Chuck Hagel quit!

McConnell's parroting the party line, but anyone with a brain knows that behind that creepy, waxy turtle face he's sick to his stomach.