Well, now they’ve done it. Dan Balz warned us:
South Carolina Republican chairman Katon Dawson won his moment in the political limelight today by shifting his state’s GOP primary to Jan. 19, 2008. But in doing so, he may have put the entire tradition of the presidential nominating system at risk.
South Carolina’s move is almost certain to trigger other changes in the calendar. The issue is how much the current system can be bent and stretched and warped before it finally breaks apart.
That is what elected officials and state party leaders in states like New Hampshire, Iowa, Michigan, Florida and South Carolina should be thinking about as they contemplate how to react to Dawson’s announcement today.
The problem was that Chairman Dawson rubbed too hard with his eraser, and so the paper got awfully thin. Then Iowa Democratic Party Chair Scott Brennan stood over it with a mug of coffee in his hand, which was really careless, and he spilled it, and Chairman Dawson ran in with paper towels, but you know what a big rubber the guy is, and the whole presidential primary calendar just fell apart. Douglas Bailey from Unity08 walked in the room and Dawson and Brennan each said it was the other one’s fault, so nobody got to play at recess; everybody had to stand at the wall and watch the kickball game. Dawson said he was just very, very mad! and got red in the face and had to run to the restroom so nobody would see him cry, and then he was all herky-jerky afterwards, but Bailey said that it was all right, they’d just get a new calendar tomorrow and try again.
We need a federal mandate for a completely new calendar: every state primary, or caucus, should be held on the same date—say, the first Tuesday in June—so that no state gets an unreasonable amount of influence. The current system is just plain corrupt.