The consequences of Florida's decision to move its political primary date to January 31 is already having real ramifications, as it's being reported that South Carolina will now move its primary date up to 10 days before Florida, to Saturday, January 21.
Obviously this increases the reality that New Hampshire will move its primary date up, and with Iowa always the first in line, we could see what happened in 2008, when the Iowa Caucus was held in the first week of January (unless it's moved to the end of this year, which has never happened).
As has been well documented, the Florida Legislature voted to move its primary date up four years ago, and that had major negative ramifications – for the Democrats, who had all of their delegates stripped and the primary vote essentially canceled, severely hurting Hillary Clinton, who couldn't take those delegates with her in her race against Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination (the state got their delegates back after Obama was already declared the winner of the race). The Republicans only lost half of their delegates, which obviously wasn't much of a deterrent, because they're doing it again this year.
Not only have party leaders throughout the country reacted negatively to Florida's somewhat selfish move, but now the Wall Street Journal's editorial board is following suit, with a lead editorial in Monday's paper titled Florida Republicans for Obama.
This article appears in Sep 29 – Oct 5, 2011.