The Republican Party should never have adopted the divisive and disparate primary delegate allocation process used by the Democrats in the 2008 election.
Candidates who have to attack members of their own party just to get the nomination inevitably draw themselves into a wider net of going back on right-leaning statements and affirmations when running once again for the center during the general election.
It was a foolish idea for the Republican Party to agree to so many debates. How many times did the voters need to hear the same line of questioning, the same flat answers, and then in order to stand out in some minuscule manner, candidates would offer up firebrand statements which fired up the audience, but turned off low-information, last-minute voters who paid more attention to sound-bites than sound argument's.
Fred Thompson, one of the 2008 GOP candidates, argued that the primaries needed to stop for this reason. The media helped feed this intraparty feeding frenzy, of course, tying Mitt Romney's stable, static, yet unimpressive numbers with the intermittent rise and fall of the other candidates.
Pizza Mogul Herman Cain suffered not just because of allegations of sexual harassment, but his poor knowledge of foreign policy, coupled with the failed 9-9-9 plan exposed an unserious presidential candidate throughout.
Rick Santorum was not a serious contender, but just one more "not-Romney" who kept the hopes of social conservatives alive long enough to prolong the primary fight.
The 2012 GOP Presidential election candidates were not very good at all. The blogosphere and the pundits have not explained what factors discouraged so many well-qualified and battle worn candidates.
Fewer debates and a shorter primary season will ensure that the next Presidential nominee will bring more to the general election than this time around.