Florida ignores the rules to have an earlier GOP primary

By Richard K. Barry

Here's an interesting point of information reported by CNN yesterday:

Florida is now expected to hold its primary on the last day in January, a move likely to throw the carefully arranged Republican nominating calendar into disarray and jumpstart the nominating process a month earlier than party leaders had hoped. 

CNN speculated that if this were to happen it would most likely force the traditional early states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada to push their primaries and caucuses up into early or mid-January.

The move by Florida would violate rules set out by the Republican National Committee (RNC) that forbids any states other than the four mentioned above from holding a primary before March 6th.

The point of jumping the queue is to have more relevance in choosing the eventual nominee. To police the matter, the RNC stipulates that anyone who ignores the rules is subject to losing half their delegates to the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida in August. Doesn't appear to be much of a deterrent.

Even those who only casually follow the calendar for the nominating process would understand how important the sequence of caucuses and primary can be for candidates who want to put together a coherent campaign strategy.

For example, Michele Bachmann has said that she will focus on winning in Iowa. Jon Huntsman is hoping he can help his campaign by doing well in New Hampshire. I'm sure Romney and Perry know exactly how well they would like to do in which states to keep the money and momentum flowing. Needless to say, planning is going to be hard if states are moving their dates hither and yon.

At the moment, the earlier primary and caucus dates, some sanctioned by the RNC and some not, are as follows:

• Jan. 31 - Florida (in violation of RNC rules)
• Feb. 6 - Iowa caucuses
• Feb. 7 - Colorado caucuses (unknown if the RNC will object)
• Feb. 14 - New Hampshire primary
• Feb. 18 - Nevada caucuses
• Feb. 28 - South Carolina primary
• Feb. 28 - Arizona primary (in violation of RNC rules)
• Feb. 28 - Michigan primary (in violation of RNC rules)

And many others will follow.

Already the organizers of the Nevada caucuses, which are sanctioned by the RNC, have said that they would in fact move their date if Florida went ahead with a January 31 primary.

Apparently, the RNC is hoping to strike a deal with Florida to put its primary on February 21st, immediately after the four early states. It would still be in violation of the rules, but wouldn't muck up the earliest contests.

While it is surely true that going earlier may give a state greater influence in choosing the eventual nominee, it looks just a little foolish and pretty disrespectful of an agreed upon process. Even though I'm on the other side of the political fence, the political organizer in me hates to see people ignore the rules of the game once everything is set in motion.

Sounds boring, but democracy requires rules, not that Republicans seem to care all that much about fair play, even amongst themelves. And of course given the vote counting travesty of 2000, we know that the GOP in Florida considers democracy little more than an annoyance.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)