I admit my ignorance. What is so earth shattering about changing the primary dates?

Hey, hey, hey…if they keep it up you could spend Thanksgiving in Iowa. In fact the best time for the NH primary would be fall foliage time.

While we’re discussing primaries, it’s fascinating that the taxpayers finance the nomination process of these two private parties.

I presume we have primaries at all as a gesture toward democratic selection.  Does this system succeed in that regard?

I mean who wouldn’t prefer Iowa over Florida for Christmas? 

That was a joke. 

They should have dealt with this problem before by reforming the system:  leave Iowa, NH, SC, and NV as the first four, smaller states with affordable media in four different regions; then everyone else rotates every cycle, back to front so whoever is first after the first four one cycle is last the next.  Get everyone to agree on it.

The reason it must stop is that at least Iowa and NH are NEVER going to allow their early status to be jumped – NH has a state law requiring it.  So we could end up with the first primaries right after the Inauguration.

The old “solution” hasn’t worked – depriving credentials to the delegates from states that violate the rules.  But what happens is that the nominee sees no reason to anger a given state, especially a swing state like Florida, so orders them seated anyway, so there is no effective penalty.

Not me.

The way to do the primaries is very simple and straightforward:

States can schedule their primary by ascending order of population size.

Why?  Because if the smaller states go last, they will be completely irrelevant and overshadowed by the larger states. 

The logic behind “open” primaries in states with party registration is that it invites the independents and non-aligned voters into the party.  Not sure that makes a lot of sense, because if they influence the process but abandon the eventual nominee, the GOP may even lose on the deal.

But many states, mostly in the South, don’t register by party at all.  Arguably, that is the most American approach – what business is it of the government’s what party you follow, and why should you have to align (or not) with any party to register to vote?

Southern parties used to make up for this by requiring loyalty oaths:  you had to swear you would only support the nominee before being allowed to vote in their primary.  Of course they were unenforceable, and lost most of their meaning as our society has drifted away from concepts of honor and the practice of religion, but they were pretty much outlawed some years ago anyway.

So we are stuck with an imperfect system.  Attempts to make it perfect usually make it worse.

Go ahead, Stacy.  Tell us how you really feel.

I mainly wonder if this is going to affect the filing deadlines. If it does, this might inadvertently cripple any potential Palin campaign, unless she declares her candidacy like, say, today.

That was my first thought too. Does anyone know the process for getting on the ballot in FL? It takes a pretty big, widespread effort here in Indiana.

By “southern parties” you principally mean the Democratic Party, right? On my honor, I will vote for the Democrat, didn’t those old southerners have any pride?

as a *

Primaries at the end of January are insane.

But then so is the New Hampshire primary, on any date, under the current rules. In a highly contested race, the primary determines the most popular GOP candidate incapable of beating the Democrats. Winning the primary is like winning a steerage ticket aboard the RMS Titanic. Maybe the only way to fix this and still have open primaries is for independent-heavy primaries to generate fewer delegates.

April 15.