Do any of you recall when Florida Senator Bill Nelson in 2008 proposed an election reform package, including abolishing the Electoral College and setting up a rotating series of regional primary elections? Maybe not, since it got absolutely zero traction and died on the vine.
We bring that up today upon learning of a letter sent out out by the respective chairs of the Republican parties of South Carolina and Iowa, two states that are guaranteed (along with New Hampshire and Nevada now) to have the first primaries/caucuses in the country. It's been traditional for Iowa to have their caucus follow by New Hampshire having the first primary seemingly since time immemorial. Before 2008, the respective political parties then, saying they wanted to get regional as well as racial diversity, announced that Nevada and South Carolina would get into that prized status of first in the nation.
In 2008, that led to a mad scramble by many other states that consider themselves to be influential - like Florida - to move up their election date, to be relevant in terms of having an impact on who becomes President (Think about how significant the relatively small state of Iowa has been alone in terms of the Democratic nominee for President - even though Howard Dean was the early favorite, John Kerry's 'comeback' win there catapulted him to the nomination. Ditto 2008, when Barack Obama stunned everyone in winning that state, he was the immediate favorite, eclipsing Hillary Clinton's win a week later in New Hampshire).
This was written by Karen Floyd, the chairwoman of the South Carolina Republican Party:
"Simply put, if Florida does not respect the process by which our primary calendar was set, the RNC should not be bound to the process by which the convention site was selected," Floyd wrote. "If Florida refuses to move its primary date into compliance with RNC rules, I am respectfully requesting that the Committee convene a special task force to select a new site for the 2012 Convention outside the state of Florida."
