Texas' primaries closed to the people's voice

The state of Texas seems to be a bit confused in terms of its primary process. Officially, Texas has closed primaries, meaning that one is unable to vote in multiple party's primary elections, though it's said that in practice Texas enjoys open primaries due to the lack of election-to-election party constance that other closed primary states enforce. It's my belief that closed primaries, even in Texas' weakened form (and even some implementation of open primary legislation,) run counter to the democratic process and only serve to further the dilluting effect that two-party politics has on legislation.

First of all, the nature of a primary is the selection of candidates to run on the national ticket. Under either system, each voter is only allowed to vote for one candidate, period. This, in essence, turns the primary into a pre-election, forcing the voters to vote before they cast their final ballot.

The primary argument against open elections is that it provides voters with an opportunity to vote for the opposition and dilute or manipulate an opposition party's nomination. This argument appears to have a hole in it, namely, that voters throw away their vote on a manipulative vote and do not get to select the candidate they actually prefer, but rely on the remainder of supporters for their party to make the right decision. This is,unfortunately for the anti-open primary bloc, a valid democratic expression, and it's entirely legitimate to vote specifically against a party. Obviously manipulation and dillution can happen, but what prevents both sides of the aisle from doing it? This argument supposes that only one party, probably the locally dominant party, will engage in dillution to keep its power, but who says that an open primary wouldn't give us Dennis Kucinich v. Ron Paul in 2008's presidential election, an election between unelectables?

Suppose a voter in Texas decides to be sneaky and vote Democrat in the upcoming Presidential primary. He'd vote for the candidates who are most likely to be both nominatable and defeatable by his own party. While he's busy voting for Barack Obama or Mike Gravel, his own party goes on to nominate Rudy Giuliani, the most liberal Republican of the major candidates, no thanks to Dr. Sneaky. He loses either way!

Both open and closed primary legislation has been indicted for constitutionality, namely the process of publicly declaring or registering your party affiliation. Now this is something I can get behind. I believe that ideally, a voter should be able to vote “by office” not “by party” when the Primaries roll around. This is currently impossible in either of the dominant primary systems, disabling independents and the two diametrics (libertarians and statists) from effectively voting their mind, instead choosing a party that suits all their needs on all levels of government.