It's starting to look like old time politics

Because of the way the primary caucus system has worked over the past 30 years or so, political conventions to me have lost their meaning because their has been no drama. For that reason, I've lost track of the rules governing delegate selection. My memory says that one or both parties used to give delegate seats to state party leaders and elected officials (such as state party chairmen, governors, senators, and congressmen.) That would seem to fit in with the Democrats super delegates but I don't know if the Republicans did or do the same thing. Also the parties used to give more delegates to states they carried in the previous presidential election. The Iowa caucuses seemed different than my memory. In the past I thought that only the 3 candidates with the most supporters in local caucuses would have delegates go on to the next larger district caucus. Because of that, the supporters for the 3 leading candidates would lobby to get the supporters of the alsorans to come over to their side before the end of the meeting. Perhaps that was a Democrat thing. Also the conventions used to be different. There were favorites sons and there were candidates whose names were put into nomination who had no delegates or chance of winning. The most prominent of these was Harold Stassen. Starting in 1944, his name was put into nomination 12 times. In the early years, he was a legitimate candidate. Later he became the butt of jokes. How things have changed.

The worst thing in politics now, I think, is money. I think the quality of a candidate takes a back seat to how much money they have. You have to wonder, if Santorum had been declared the winner in Iowa right after the caucuses, would he have gotten more money then and made the race closer? Certainly, if Newt was being bankrolled by super PAC money (coming primarily form one person), a lot of his support might go to Santorum or Paul, again making the race closer.