dansac currently has a diary about how Hillary Clinton is still trying to pull the "If the Democratic Party used GOP rules, I'd already be the nominee!" crap, among other utterly pointless arguments.
She's tried using this line so often that it occurred to me that while what she says may technically be true (but then again, if the Dems used GOP rules, the various candidates' campaign strategies would have been completely different anyway, so who the hell knows what would've happened?), but the obvious corollary to this is that if the GOP used Democratic Party rules, it's entirely likely that they wouldn't know who their nominee is yet either.
Here's the breakdown of the first few Republican Primaries:
Remember, McCain needs 1,191 delegates to win (2,380 total).
IOWA: Huckabee: 34% / Romney: 25% / Thompson: 13% / McCain: 13% / Paul: 10%
OK, I'm not going to go into the minute details about "add-ons", "PLEOs", District-level and so forth; for purposes of this diary, let's just assume that these percentages were evenly spread state-wide. Oops! McCain didn't make the 15% cut-off point, so Iowa's 37 GOP delegates get divided 21 for Huckabee to 16 for Romney.
WYOMING: Romney 67% / Thompson 25% (no one else broke 15%).
Romney gets 8 delegates, Thompson 4. Note that Wyoming lost half of their original 24 delegates for going early--and I haven't heard any whining from Mitt Romney about that, have you?
NEW HAMPSHIRE: At last! McCain wins with 37%; Romney is the only other one to break 15%, with 32%. Ut-oh: He didn't really win New Hampshire, because the delegate count is an even split (6 for McCain, 6 for Romney). Again, New Hampshire also lost half their delegates for breaking the rules (as did Michigan, S. Carolina and Florida, and Louisiana all of their delegates even though John McCain supposedly won! Boy, those Republicans are sticklers for following the rules, aren't they? I guess Hillary doesn't like that part of the GOP system...
MICHIGAN: Romney 39% / McCain 30% / Huckabee 16%
Romney would've gotten around 14 of Michigan's 30 total (down from 60!); McCain would've picked up 11, and Huckabee around 5.
NEVADA: Romney 51%; no one else breaks 15%. All 31 delegates are his!
S. CAROLINA: McCain 33% / Huckabee 30% / Thompson 16% / Romney 15%
McCain and Huckabee get 8 apiece; 4 each for Thompson and Romney.
Tally so far?
McCain: 6+1+8+8 = 25
Romney: 16+8+6+14+31+4 = 79
Huckabee: 21+5+4 = 30
Thompson: 4+4 = 8
...and so on. Holy Cow, look at that! Mitt Romney would've had over 3 times as many delegates as McCain with 6 states done! McCain would be in 3rd place! A race to the finish for Romney and Huckabee!
In reality, my title might not be entirely accurate, since I actually haven't a clue what the eventual results would have been. Perhaps McCain would still have won (eventually), perhaps Romney would have, or perhaps they'd still be slugging it out like Obama and Clinton. Maybe Ron Paul would've managed to eke out a handful of delegates from each and every state, building enough numbers to play Kingmaker. Who the fuck knows?
Doesn't really matter--my point is still valid and blatantly obvious: If "IF's" and "BUT's" were berries and nuts, we'd all have a full larder for winter (or something like that).