Biggest surprise of this year's Republican primary season

[Mr. Morden]

Stephen Colbert's Herman Cain's 1% in South Carolina.

[Mr. Morden]

Why exactly did Santorum win Colorado? It still makes no sense.

Because Romney didn't outspend Santorum by an enormous margin there, like he did in other states.  At that stage in the campaign, Romney was basically ignoring the post-Nevada caucus states, in the hopes that the media would then ignore them too.  But that didn't work out too well, so he had to readjust after Santorum's Feb. 7 victories.

[Mr. Morden]

A big surprise is the absolute stupidity of the Republican primary system.

Confusing is a good word to describe it.

Starting in 2016, all Republican primaries and caucuses should have the following requirements:

-Only registered Republicans can vote

-Candidates are granted the number of delegates in proportion to the percentage of the vote they receive

-Candidates must win at least 15% of the vote in order to qualify for any delegates

#2 and #3 directly contradict each other. 

In any case, #2 and #3 certainly aren't going to be imposed on a national level, because the RNC will continue to let states decide their own delegate allocation, with the exception of the weak proportionality requirement for early voting states.  The RNC is basically going to keep the 2012 rules intact for 2016:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=152436.0

Now, there might be more caucus states choosing to adopt something like #2, to bind delegate selection to caucus results.  After some of the issues with Paulite infiltration at the later stages of delegate selection, this might be something of a concern.  But it won't be a big change.  And the WTA states aren't likely to switch to proportional.

#1 also isn't going to be imposed on the national level, but some more states might opt for it.  Of course, many states don't have party registration, so such a rule would be impossible.