In an open primary, people don’t have to be Republicans to vote in a Republican primary. Independents and Democrats can vote, too. Closed primaries exclude non-party members from voting in a given party’s primary.

Rick Santorum’s goal is to win the GOP’s presidential nomination. He will not be getting this blog’s endorsement, to understate the case. But I’ll give him some free advice anyway.

Santorum’s social issue stances are, to be polite, polarizing. That makes him an easy general election kill; he doesn’t appeal to independents or Democrats. That gives independents, and especially Democrats, an incentive to vote for Santorum in the primaries, at least in open-primary states where the rules allow it. A Santorum-Obama contest will probably end in Obama’s favor.

So if Santorum wants the nomination, and at least a small shot at the White House, he should court hostile voters in open-primary states like Michigan.

Romney, for his many faults, probably has the best shot of winning a general election of anyone in the GOP field. That means Democrats want him to lose, and someone polarizing like Santorum to win. They’ll turn out for Santorum, if only he’d ask them to. That’s probably his best shot at winning something most people would rather he wouldn’t.

It’s a cynical strategy. Then again, politics is nothing if not applied cynicism.

UPDATE: Looks like the Santorum campaign didn’t need any prompting from me. Turns out they’ve been doing robocalls.

Maybe the story the political class is missing is not “They don’t like the Republican field,” or “They don’t like Obama.” Maybe the story is that people are tuning out altogether. Maybe they’re bored with politics, and most especially with politicians. Maybe they don’t think our government can’t (sic) solve anything. Maybe, even, our political class has done such a good job depicting the crisis we’re in that the American people, with their low faith in institutions, think nothing, really, can be done about it. So let’s check out. Let’s watch the game.

Businesses that treat their customers as badly as the Republican and Democratic parties treat theirs tend to go out of business. This may be exactly what we’re seeing.

(via Tim Cavanaugh)

That’s why, if I were a partisan Democrat, I would be upset with my party over the recall elections in Wisconsin. Millions of dollars are being taken away from close races around the country to go towards unseating a governor who will be up for re-election in two years anyway.

The recall may well succeed; one measure of enthusiasm is the roughly one million signatures on the recall petition, twice what was needed. But the most this expensive campaign would buy is two years in the governor’s mansion.

And this campaign will be spectacularly expensive. Labor interests view their livelihood as being at stake. That’s hyperbole in my opinion, but people do feel that way. And they will be pouring millions into the race. Tempers are running high, and strategists for the blue team have to be disappointed that so many on their side have lost theirs.

Activists are so passionate about unseating Walker that they fired before they aimed. There is no Democratic candidate to unify behind, giving Republicans a built-in advantage. Not only will there be a bruising (and expensive) primary, but many Democratic voters will be on the wrong side of the enthusiasm gap if their preferred candidate loses the primary or the nominee has low name recognition.

No one knows how it will play out yet. But even if it succeeds, this particular temper tantrum could well cost Democrats a few Congressional seats. Maybe even the White House, if it takes enough resources away from the ground game in swing states.

Political markets are different than economic ones, but duopolies still have many of the same qualities — particularly regarding customer abuse. That’s why I was pleased to see a writeup in this morning’s Politico that the percentage of political independents is at an all-time high in a long-running Gallup poll. A full 40 percent of Americans have now opted out of the Republican-Democrat duopoly.

Associate Director of Technology Policy Studies and Iowa native Ryan Radia takes a look at how the different strains of Republican voters are deciding on their party’s presidential nominee. In the years to come, Radia believes that the GOP will need to reinvent itself ideologically if it is to remain politically relevant.

Modeling your re-election strategy on an obnoxious authoritarian’s failed third-party run for the presidency a hundred years ago is an interesting choice, but not necessarily a wise one. It’s a move of desperation, unlikely to work.

GOP front-runner Newt Gingrich calls himself “a Theodore Roosevelt Republican.” Despite (or because of?) T.R.’s many flaws, politicians from both parties have long found something irresistible about our pulpit-pounding 26th president.

But T.R.’s enduring appeal is an enduring mystery. What’s so attractive about Roosevelt’s political philosophy? A loudmouthed cult of manliness? A warped belief that war is a good tonic for whatever ails the national spirit? A contemptuous attitude toward limits on presidential power?

John McCain, the 2008 GOP nominee, also suffers from a Teddy Roosevelt complex, as Matt Welch details in his book McCain: The Myth of a Maverick. If there’s any lesson to be learned from presidential candidates’ shared T.R. fetish, it’s that only those truly in love with power can endure the the hell of the campaign trail to acquire it.