August 09, 2007
Primary Calendar Madness: Who Wins? Who Loses?
This is getting sort of silly.
Despite DNC and RNC plans to punish states that stage primaries too early, states including Florida, Iowa and New Hampshire are likely to push up their presidential nomination votes following the South Carolina Republican Party's decision to move its Jan. 29 primary to Jan. 19. In particular, Iowa and New Hampshire are giving each other the hairy eyeball as both look at moving up their tentative dates, Jan. 14 and 22, respectively.
If New Hampshire moves its date to a week before South Carolina's, Iowa will be required by state law to look at dates eight days before or sooner. Iowa will be looking at holding caucuses uncomfortably close to the New Year holiday, which means moving them to 2007 would be not only on the table but likely.
As it stands, both fields are still very crowded. Primary campaigns are all about letting voters know who you are, so this is bad news for the less familiar candidates. Fred Thompson, who is expected to formally enter the GOP race in September, will have less than three months to spend his cash and canvas early contest states.
Meanwhile, for the front-runners, the "inevitable" just actually got a little more inevitable. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Rudy Giuliani are campaigning as if they're already in the general; the smushed-up calendar could sap some import from the early primaries, which means they can keep doing what they're doing.
If anything, the jockeying among states to be first seems unfair to voters. With well more than a year to go before Election Day, plus it being summer, they can be forgiven for not scrutinizing the field just yet. Those who have been subjected to election coverage are mostly annoyed by it. A recent Pew Research Center poll found just a third of Americans are paying close attention to the campaigns; the rest said that the 2008 politicking was happening "too early," and that it "stinks," "sucks" and is "crap/crappy."
The frontloaded schedule means voters are under the gun to study and decide on their next president. Picking a candidate can be like buying a new car: There's lots of shiny and cool things to look at, but -- bottom line -- you're stuck with it for a while. Judging by their slow approach to the campaigns even as most of them can't wait for the Bush administration to be over, it might be fair to guess that voters would prefer more time to browse and compare.
Unhappy about all this? Blame South Carolina, New Hampshire and Iowa. "Iowa will go first. That is the bottom line," Governor Chet Culver declared yesterday. FOX News' Carl Cameron reports that the Granite State might wait until as late as December to announce its new primary date. That's a long time for the nominating calendar -- and consequently, the campaigns -- to still be up in the air.
The Washington Post reports on the "infuriating" effect this all has on campaign strategists. The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder also breaks down what's ahead.
Posted at 7:00 PM
Posted to:
Bush Administration, Campaigns, Democrats, Fred Thompson, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Republicans, Rudy Giuliani, WH 2008
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