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CAMPAIGN '96: OPEN CONVENTION?

PRIMARY RACES, ESPECIALLY the early ones, look so earnest and earthy it is easy to mistake them for truly democratic exercises. When Pat Buchanan walked away with New Hampshire last week, he took pleasure in arguing that The People had found their voice, jostled the conventional wisdom, spooked the party elders and voted their hearts.

That helps explain why a lot of Republicans decided long ago that too much democracy is a dangerous thing when it comes to nominating a President. In the next four weeks the game of presidential politics turns very serious, very unforgiving and very unpopulist. It's affirmative...

Quotes of the Day »

RAY KELLY, New York City Police Commissioner, on the arrest of a New Jersey man in one of the nation's most baffling missing-children cases, the disappearance more than three decades ago of 6-year-old Etan Patz.
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