OK, so he wasn't specifically talking to the corrupt oligarchy that gave us Mark Kirk, but he could have been. In his excellent new The New Road to Serfdom, he remarks on page 33
"How extraordinary, I thought, to have a system where politicians see their role as being to represent their constituencies in their parties rather than the other way around; where policy is made bottom-up rather than top-down. My own electoral division, South East England, is, like Georgia, a pretty right-wing place--certainly in the sense of being fiscally conservative. But, whereas both parties in Georgia try to reflect the temper of the local populace, Labour candidates in South East England are, if anything, further to the left than in the rest of the country, reflecting as they do the prejudices of tiny selection committees."
Of course, since Illinois' Republicans have been unable to elect the members of the state's Republican central committee since 1979, the direction of the party is by the same sort of clique that Hannan complains of being the bane of the British party system. When Illinois Republicans are goaded into making a lying pro-abort their Senate candidate, can we really say they have an open primary? Time can only tell, but it is entirely possible that Alexi Ginnoulias' positions on abortion would have been identical to those of Mark Kirk. Kirk is Illinois' answer to Aqua Buddha Rand Paul. Is it a good thing that I can say that about my Senator?
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