Primarily Wrong

OK, so, for anyone who's not familiar with the situation, let me give you my layman's perspective on it. The State of Florida has decided to move the date of it's Presidential Primary voting to an earlier date than normal, sometime in late January. The reasoning, as I understand it, is that the earlier primaries tend to carry more weight with the national committees, and at the nominating conventions, than the later ones do. Being that most of the early primaries are in Northern, and not terribly diverse, states, the State of Florida felt that, as one of the more diverse states in the union, Florida's primary should carry a little more clout, and not be lost amidst the clutter of all the later states. To some extent, I guess this makes sense... of a sort.

When I first heard this, I really didn't care, my thought was, tell me when the polls are open and I'll be there, no big deal. Boy was I wrong. I guess, from the reactions of both the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Republican National Committee (RNC) it's a huge deal... at least to them.

I haven't heard for sure if it has been finalized, but the RNC had been talking about taking away half of Florida's delegates at the Republican Convention, while the DNC may be planning to strip all of Florida's democratic delegation, and has barred any Democratic candidate from making any public appearances in Florida for the Primary season, as punishment to Florida for the Primary move (Of course they can still hold private fund raisers in Florida, you know, can't count out the upper crust, just the "nobodies" who actually work for a living).

OK, maybe I'm not as politically astute as I'd like to think, but honestly, why such a big deal? Who cares when the states let the people vote? I honestly don't get it.

Anyway, let's assume for the moment that they are right, and it is a big deal and Florida shouldn't have done it (if you can actually wrap your brain around that nutty position). The regular folks in Florida did not do this. We didn't get a vote. So any punishment taken against the citizens of Florida for this move is punishing the wrong people. They are saying that the people of Florida don't deserve a vote, and don't deserve to have a voice in the primaries at all, just because the State has taken the position that Floridians deserve a louder voice. Personally I don't see why all 50 states don't hold their primaries on the same day, what would be wrong with that?

To be fair, there are Democrats who get this, Florida's US Senator Bill Nelson, along with some other leading Florida dems have filed a lawsuit against the DNC to attempt to force them back from their position, and I hope they succeed. As I said, I'm not sure if the RNC has made a final determination yet, but if they do decide to penalize Florida, I hope that our Republican leaders will have as much backbone as Senator Nelson.

And one final thing. Probably the biggest point I can make about all of this, these Democrats who are basically interviewing with the boss (the American people) for the job of "Leader of the Free World" want us to think that they have what it takes to be the President of the United States, and yet they don't have the backbone to tell the DNC where they can stick it when it comes to public appearances in Florida.

Can you imagine Fred Thompson sheepishly agreeing to stay out of Florida just because the RNC told him to? I didn't think so.