They assumed that the selection process as a whole would be nonpartisan and devoid of factions (or political parties), which they believed were always a corrupting influence in politics.
Seven months after the launch of Windows Store alongside Windows 10, the place remains devoid of the top third-party games and signature applications that define the PC experience.
Nowadays, he said, most successful rap in this country is party music devoid of thought-provoking lyrics.
To believe that this political party is devoid of any capable leaders outside the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty defies common logic.
Walter Shapiro, a New Republic special correspondent covering his ninth New Hampshire primary, wrote that he couldn't recall a "contested race in either party this devoid of energy.
And the PNG government has called time on the festering human rights catastrophe that is Manus Island, a development that left both parties gawpingly devoid of answers.
Mr. Beatty traces the rise of the railroads, the great land-grab unloosed in the West, the development of a two-party system devoid of principle and fat with corruption, and the steady abandonment of Reconstruction in the South.
There's a little bit of outdoing the Joneses and the Cohens," he added, noting that typical parties, if devoid of appearances by N.F.L. superstars or the Black Eyed Peas, range from $150,000 to $400,000.
"I say, 'Boy, this Massachusetts thing, who designed that?' " In response, Mr. Romney is reminding audiences that Mr. Obama has cast the Republicans as the "party of no," devoid of ideas.
Thrust into the role of opposition party for the first time since its creation in 1955 (aside from a brief interlude in 1993), and with its number of lawmakers cut in half by last August's humiliating defeat, the party appears demoralized, devoid of fresh ideas and threatened by defections.
