The people in charge of the primary election process that selects the nominees for leader of the free world are turning the whole business into a farce.
It’s bad enough that Iowa (January 14), New Hampshire (January 22) and South Carolina (January 29) insist on going first. Now other states are pushing ahead.
Nevada pushed itself into the break between Iowa and New Hampshire, and California and New York jumped the pack to schedule their primaries on February 5. Perhaps Florida resented the action by the big states, because they went and joined South Carolina on January 29. South Carolina now says it’s thinking about moving up. Now New Hampshire is threatening to its contest into December of 2007, and Iowa might move up, too.
How ridiculous. We could end up with a situation where the nominations are decided by early February. How unfair to the candidates. How unfair to the voters. We could easily be sitting for nine months with two candidates, waiting for the general election. How boring. Meanwhile, nobody in Washington will be able to do anything for fear that any comment or proposal will negatively affect the party’s candidate. How dangerous. The only thing we’ll have is months of gotcha politics. How terrible.
Soon the parties have get together and inject some sanity into this process; a system with four or five regional primaries would be a good place to start the discussion.
RSS 2.0
http://www.playboy.com/mt-tb.cgi/2241