A couple of reasons...
1) Each party is more or less open to anyone who wishes to throw their hat in the ring, but pretenders tend to fall to the wayside quickly and early in most years, leaving only a couple of serious contenders by this point. The GOP hasn't culled out the secondary tier as quickly as most years, although there is definitely precedent for this. The biggest change that I see is the more public battles between the entire crowd.
2) The GOP hasn't reduced the ranks because there's a genuine fracturing of the party that's been brewing for years. Small government factions, fiscal conservatives, evangelical Christians, fundamentalist Christians, big business wonks, free market uber alles fans, libertarians... they all fell under the GOP umbrella, and the internal pressures between them have hit a boiling point.
|