Sunday, October 2, 2011

The Lunacy of the Florida GOP

A panel of Florida legislators bucked national Republican Party rules Friday and approved a motion to hold the state's presidential primary on Jan. 31 of next year.

The move, crafted to ensure that Florida goes fifth in the nominating process, is certain to scramble the presidential primary calendar and push the first contest of the GOP nomination fight into the early days of January.
The full story is HERE.

Am I missing something? Florida moves up. Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada will surely move up as well. So they're still in the same place, with these states still in front of them. How is this a Win for them?

Add the fact that they will now have half their delegates stripped from them under the RNC rules, they become now less important than they were before with their full allotment of delegates.

It doesn't make sense.

According to a new Survey USA Poll out today, The majority of the Florida voters think that the Florida GOP should abide by the RNC's rules:

Should Florida be able to schedule its primary whenever it wants? Or should Florida have to obey rules set at the national level?



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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

This was a really stupid move by Florida. I wonder if the legislators were gambling that the other states would not want to lose half their delegates by moving to January as well. If this gamble had paid off, then Florida would be first in the nation and Iowa would be totally irrelevant.

I read that Nevada won't be moving to January, but that IA, NH, and SC will move up ahead of Florida. So now this appears to be a stupid stunt by all four of those states.

It would be amusing if Florida decided to change to February 1st, just to keep all of their delegates, but force the other three states to go half delegates if they want to stay before Florida.

Anonymous said...

The other 4 states can move before Florida no matter when Florida decides to have their primary without any penalties.

larry said...

If Florida is not punished for doing this, the RNC is only inviting more of the same the next time around.

Katrina L. Lantz said...

I do not understand why a national organization like the RNC doesn't just establish a real Super Tuesday when all states vote. The way it's done makes some states feel left out of the election no matter what. Let us all vote at once and pick someone based on merit instead of likelihood of getting enough delegates.

Slick-Willy said...

DanL - FL can't move ahead of Feb 28th w/o losing 1/2 of its delegates, so a Feb 1 move would do the same as a Jan 31.

Anon - The last I read about it is that the other states WILL lose 1/2 of their delegates if they move into January. However, IA won't because caucus votes aren't binding until Super Tuesday or something (not sure why). Similarly, CO won't lose any delegates for moving to Feb 28th (also caucus state).