Primary Frenzy

Don Surber notes that the RNC wants to penalize Florida and other states for trying to jump the gun and disrupt the choreographed order of primaries around the country.

Republican voters in Florida would not be nearly as screwed by the RNC efforts as their Democratic party brethren would be by Howard Dean and the DNC. However, both parties' efforts smack of disenfranchisement.

The primary season has been turned into a free-for-all as states try to get the jump on the others and push to the front of the pack. I've joked in the past that we might start seeing primary elections in 2007 at the rate we're going, and I might not be far off if the national party officials can't get states to stop jumping. Wyoming decided to jump all the way to January 5 for their caucus. New Hampshire has threatened to run its elections in 2007 to retain its primacy among primaries.

That creates a scenario where you have a domino effect as other states try to rejigger their own position. Most are settling for February 5 - the Super Duper Tueday, but some states aren't satisfied with being one among a bunch. They want to shape the nomination process more directly - early primary states generally winnow candidates down.

The Times notes:

The Democratic National Committee carved out an exception for New Hampshire and South Carolina to vote early, so Democrats in those states will not be penalized.

The Republican National Committee set up strict rules in 2000 when it was already clear that states were jockeying to move up primary dates. The rules were made in an effort to avoid the nominating process turning into a national primary, party officials said. Yet despite the rules, some 20 states are likely to hold primaries on Feb. 5, creating a situation unlike any in modern history.

“If we don’t do something, this is going to become a national primary and there will be federal legislation that takes it away from the parties,” said a top national Republican Party official who spoke on condition of anonymity because negotiations on the matter were continuing.

One possible situation could allow the states to seat a full delegation even after they are penalized. If there is a clear nominee by the time of the convention, as has been the case for the last 50 years, the presumptive candidate could petition the national party to restore the delegates from the penalized states. Such a move, however, could anger the states that held back from bumping up their primaries, and they could challenge such a move.

If the nomination is not settled by the time of the conventions, the issue of delegates could become crucial. If delegates are not seated, they cannot cast votes. But even if the nomination is largely settled, the battles over seating delegates and accommodating main figures from these states at the convention could hamper the party’s unity going into the general election — something national and state officials said they were hoping to avoid.

The party leadership - on both sides of the aisle - are threatening states that they would withhold counting delagates from those early primaries. Cries of disenfranchisement ring true - especially in Florida, and it was especially ironic since it was Democrats who were first to make the threat against the state, which played host to the disputed 2000 elections.