Palmetto GOP to strike back on primary date

From the frontlines in the war over primary dates...

The battle of the primaries intensified yesterday when South Carolina Republicans announced they will retain the first presidential primary in the South by jumping ahead of Florida's newly set Jan. 29 contest.

Their decision trumps Florida's attempt to hold its primary much earlier than all but four other states and likely will force New Hampshire to hold its primary a week or two earlier than its tentatively set date of Jan. 22 and possibly affect Iowa's caucuses on Jan. 14.

"We have the latitude as a party of setting our own primary dates and we are going to move our primary accordingly before January 29 to ensure that we are the first in the South," South Carolina Republican Chairman Katon Dawson told The Washington Times yesterday.

"I'm not worrying about angering anyone else. Remember, this is a state that started the Civil War. We are not worried about offending any other state. We're going to pick a date and let the chips fall where they may," Mr. Dawson said.

As I've said before, this is probably the last ride on the early primary merry-go-round, in that the process, (with the crazed frontloading) has gotten so out of hand that we're faced with what will almost be a national primary on Feb. 5th with a possible 70% of all delegates being chosen that day. The end result will probably be a major move at the national convention next year to set up a new time-line (probably some kind of a rotating deal) that stretches this thing out more. The only problem will be getting cooperation from the state governments. We'll see.

In the meantime, we're first in the South, and that's just the way it's gonna' be. So take that Florida!