Primary-calendar brinksmanship is starting to get pretty tedious, if you ask me, but you have to know when the damn things are going to be held. For the record, let it be noted that Iowa Republicans have now determined to hold their caucus on January 3, presumably before everyone fully sobers up from their New Year’s celebrations and notices again what a depressing field of candidates they’ll have to choose from.
That was a joke. The GOP candidates are, of course, wonderful people, and there’s no better way to get ready for the Orange Bowl than to exercise your democratic right to decide whether the party of moral values should be represented in the fall elections by an adulturer with anger-management problems or by an amoral flip-flopper.
Meanwhile, the Politico reports that New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner is not ruling out a December 2007 primary date. Gardner is standing on the ledge, muttering “don’t make me do it,” waiting for Michigan’s next move:
Gardner pointed out a rarely-noticed part of the New Hampshire law that says he must set a primary date for “each year when a president of the United States is to be elected OR THE YEAR PREVIOUS.” (emphasis added.)
The law anticipates that other states might threaten New Hampshire’s status by moving their contests to very early in January.
And Michigan may do that.
There seems to be a sort of convergence here. I expect that, by mid-November, we’ll learn that Michigan has re-scheduled its primary for three weeks ago, Ron Paul won because his supporters turn up everywhere, even the past, and now New Hampshire is threatening to move its primary date to October 1975.
Something to say?
