So, the Nevada GOP blinked, according to the Boston Globe:
Nevada today moved its caucus date back a month to Feb. 4, ending a cross-country power struggle with New Hampshire and paving the way for the Granite State to schedule its traditional first-in-the-nation primary in early January.
__
Nevada Republicans had originally scheduled their caucus for Jan. 14, infuriating New Hampshire officials, who said the date would throw the election calendar into chaos and force them to hold their primary in early December…
The NYTimes adds an interesting fillip on “bring[ing] a sense of order to an otherwise chaotic primary calendar“:
Nevada’s initial plan to hold its caucuses on January came, in part, at the request of the Mitt Romney campaign. But the decision touched off a wave of controversy, including pledges by most of the Republican candidates to boycott the Nevada caucuses…
__
Mr. Romney, who won the Nevada caucuses four years ago, had worked behind the scenes to try to nudge Nevada Republican officials to move up the date in hopes of creating a friendly spot on the calendar.
__
“It was just friendly encouragement to accelerate,” said Robert List, a former Nevada governor and member of the Republican National Committee. “It’s my understanding that they were feeling that if he were to do well in Nevada and New Hampshire that there could be sort of an escalating effect as he moved toward South Carolina and Florida. It could give them some momentum and could be helpful.”
__
But the effort backfired and touched off a storm in New Hampshire. That state’s largest newspaper, The Union-Leader, called on Mr. Romney to boycott the Nevada caucuses and uphold the tradition of the New Hampshire primary…
It has been widely assumed — not least by Willard ‘Mitt’ Romney — that New Hampshire was a “gimme” for the Romney campaign, where he has a multi-million-dollar “summer cottage” on Lake Winnipeesaukee. But the NHampsters hold their grudges almost as tightly as their wallets. If they get the impression that Willard only pays attention to the Granite State after last call, when he’s failed to hook up with some younger, cuter state that’s got something flashier to advertise than a natural rock formation which doesn’t even exist any more, well… the Manchester Union-Leader is still bragging about killing Ed Muskie’s candidacy back in 1972. They’ve always been pro-Rethuglican up there, but of course plenty of people in the current GOP don’t consider Romney a real Republican. (And plenty of normal people find Willard less than convincing in his impersonation of a real human.)
piratedan
well I do have to admit to harboring hot bondage fantasies starring Michelle Bachmann, Megyn Kelly, Carrie Prejean and naturally Snowball Snooki. It usually involves a room, strewn with rose petals and candles, mayhap some Pat Boone on the stereo, they gaze adoringly up from their sensual repose and look suggestively at the ropes and scarfs assembled on the table. Then I tie them up, make sure that we all understand and know the safewords, something simple that can’t be confused through the gags, like “tax cuts”. Then, after breaking out the scented oils, I look at them lovingly one last time and leave the room and lock the door and go downstairs to heat up some pizza rolls and slip in the full season of Firefly to watch on DVD and forget about them.
ruemara
@piratedan:
win
amk
willard yet again proving he is inept at ‘fixing’ things.
PeakVT
I hate the whole primary system as it stands. That is all.
Villago Delenda Est
@amk:
OK, so this idiot is taking New Hampshire for granted, and doesn’t think there’s not going to be any payback for doing so? Given how ornery New Hampshire Rethugs are?
He’s not very bright, is he?
amk
@Villago Delenda Est: Even after running on I-wanna-be-prezinint platform for years now, he is still clueless. Apparently, after kicking Iowa in the guts, he wants to go back there, per politico.
Is the date for the rethugs filing for nomination over yet ? If it isn’t, looks like there is still a place for a politically savvy candidate.
Helen
Is anyone else bored with this? Maybe I am drunk, but really; unless the R’s run DEADASADOORNAIL Ronald Reagan against Obama; who the hell is gonna win???
amk
Something I read on the netz
Dear racist,
Your car is Japanese. Your beer is German. Your wine is Spanish. Your democracy is Greek. Your coffee is Colombian. Your tea is Chinese. Your watch is Swiss. Your fashion is French. Your shirt is Indian. Your shoes are Thai. Your radio is Korean. Your vodka is Russian. And then you complain that your neighbor is an immigrant?
Calouste
@amk:
You’ll have a hard time prying your savvy GOP candidate loose from his card game with Bigfoot, the Yeti and the Unicorn.
Dave
“Newhampsherite.” not NHampsters, or is that like “masshole?” meh…..
dmsilev
I like the new category. Kudoes.
dmsilev
@amk:
Florida’s deadline is a week from now. The window is closing fast, even assuming that there is such a mythical beast.
Samara Morgan
Mitt cant win the general because of anti-mormon sentiment in white voters, Cain cant win because of anti-black sentiment the white vote.
Unless the GOP can start attracting non-white voters, they have no candidate.
amk
@dmsilev: Each state has a different deadline ? Or FL is it ?
xian
I still say Dick Cheney could take this nom in a heartbeat.
Sko Hayes
And Cain had a campaign staff of three people in New Hampshire, that is until he mentioned that fact, and Republican operatives swooped in to save him. Within a few days his campaign staff of three had grown to three plus “20-40 volunteers across the state”.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/cain_needs_to_hire_nh_staff_but_7O7oUOnGlbjNrwDWMfiyUP
One paid staffer in Iowa, and three in New Hampshire. Does this sound a like a serious run for president to you? And RWers everywhere are falling all over themselves to call Liberals racists for disagreeing with Cain’s 9-9-9 (stupid) tax plan.
This guy is running the Palin campaign strategy but without donors (quelle surprise there, a lot of very vocal support for Cain, but not many $$).
Waingro
New Hampshire and Iowa have a sense of entitlement towards their primaries that is really fucking annoying, as if it’s their god-given right to have the earliest and most influential primaries in their shitty, overwhelmingly rural and white states.
The primaries should be based on the closeness of the previous election- based on 2008, North Carolina and Missouri would be the earliest primaries this cycle. It’d also be nice to have a major city represented among the early primaries, but that’s a pipe dream.
doofus
@Samara Morgan: Keeping in mind that the filing deadline season is upon us (we ain’t getting no more candidates) who do you think replaces Cain as the not-Romney? Cause time is just about up, and for all the flailing they’ve done, the Teatards still haven’t got a viable replacement yet. I think the Teatards will be stuck with Romney in the end.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Sko Hayes: And that will be the annoying thing. They can’t figure out the difference between being racist and just criticism. Then again, a lot of people on the left – heck, commenters on this blog – can’t quite figure it out either. “You’re about to criticize Cain. That’s racist.”
As of right now, all I can think to respond is “Because you can’t tell the difference, Michael Steele fleeced the RNC and nearly ruined it. Not that I mind.”
BTW, I was googling his name because I couldn’t remember if it ended in an “e” or not, and one of the links that popped up was this. Not quite the Michael Steele I remember.
SiubhanDuinne
@xian:
ISWYDT
Kirbster
@Waingro: Agreed that two atypical states like New Hampshire and Iowa shouldn’t always get to distort the process. But I’d take it a step futher. A fifty-state and whatever (territory/protectorate/commonwealth/district) Primary Election Day. If there’s no clear winner, delegates can hash it out at the the party convention (which have become under the current antiquated system, pointless candidate coronations.) The downside is that the whole nation would have to put up with continuous paid political advertising for a much longer stretch of time.
Southern Beale
I have posted a rant on the Ohio animal massacre. That is all.
debbie
Have other candidates tried to manipulate the primaries like Romney has? No wonder the business community loves him so. He’s as crooked as they are.
WereBear
@Southern Beale: Tweeted you, since I agree.
SiubhanDuinne
@Southern Beale:
That was righteous, SB, and you captured (sorry!) my own grief and outrage at this situation, which I’ve been unable to express coherently because of grief and outrage overload. Thank you.
heynow
This is how corruption works. Just a little suggestion to favor himself. Escalate that and you have the lying, cheating and stealing that is done by the GOP as standard operating procedure.
Zagloba
@Kirbster: Since primaries are supposed to feature more direct interaction between candidates and voters, it isn’t really feasible to do all 50 on one day.
The better suggestion I’ve heard is to break the primary season down into 5 or 8 or 10 regional blocks of contiguous states. Each block holds its primaries/cauci on one day, and the primaries are spaced by two-week intervals. Order rotates between the blocks, so no state or region has the outside influence on the process that NH and IA currently do.
Alex S.
Funny, thanks for the insight, Anne. Romney really is like a robot candidate, ‘uncanny valley’ is perfect.
In other news, I hear that Gaddafi probably hid $200 billion from the Libyan people. That makes/made him the richest person…. ever.
xian
@SiubhanDuinne: macabre kidding aside, I honestly believe that Cheney has none of the vulnerabilities (with the tea primary voters) of any of the actual candidates.
Roger Moore
@amk:
Yeah, but all those things are legal immigrants with papers and everything. It’s the illegals I’m worried about![/teabagger]
Splitting Image
@Kirbster:
The other downside is that the larger the primary, the more money is needed to compete in the process. Having Iowa go first every time may give the state an inordinate amount of influence, but it’s cheaper to compete there than in, say, California. If every state held a primary at the same time, the candidate with the most money at the outset would win every time. The current process at least gives an insurgent candidate a chance to overtake the frontrunner by performing well in Iowa, gaining attention for himself, and catching up with the other candidate in donations.
Roger Moore
@xian:
If he only had a functioning heart.
Beauzeaux
Nevada is knee-deep in mormons. I’m not surprised Mittens would luv luv luv to have it be the first.
Jamey
@Beauzeaux: I read that as “morons.” I really did!
cleter
@debbie: In 96, Phil Gramm got Louisiana to move their caucus way up, angering Iowa and New Hampshire. Then he ended up getting beat by Pat Buchanan in his own fake caucus, followed by a humiliation in Iowa.
I think Rudy encouraged Florida to move up last time, or at least tried to take advantage of it.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Jamey: Well, those too.
dr. luba
@Splitting Image:
So why not Vermont? Or Hawaii? Just as representative of the country as a whole (and Hawaii more so) as NH or Iowa, and also small. Seriously, why should a bunch of small-minded small-town white people get the first say? Especially as they keep picking such winners as Huckabee.
……….having thought about it a bit, I think Iowa and NH are probably ideal states for the first Republican primaries. They are a mirror image of the modern Republican party.
Sammi
Florida civics teacher faces thousands of dollars in fines for registering students to vote under new GOP restrictions on voter registrations.
skippy
nice shout out to the old man in the mountain, tho new hampshire has plenty to offer besides that non-existant tourist attreaction. may i suggest, just a few twisty miles north of where the old man used to reside, the gorgeous mount washington inn, site of the bretton woods conference in 1944 that established the world bank and international monetary fund, which, it could be argued (mainly by the paul-tarss), is partially rssponsible for today’s economic mess.
anywho, a trip though any of the notches, esp. this time of year, is nothing short of spectacular.
skippy
also, typing a comment on an ipad does not guarantee priper seplling.
catclub
@xian: I saw what you did there.
catclub
@xian: Well, as the ‘primary Lugar’ themed posting from Steve Benen mentions, TARP is unpopular with the tea-party.
Cheney, as a member of the Bush administration, was probably in favor of TARP. Although he might have been in his crypt at the time of the vote.
James E. Powell
The only one among the current candidates who can be the Not-Romney is Perry. The rest of them are vanity candidates; none of them has a potential national constituency.
Let’s assume that Romney will win New Hampshire. How will he do in South Carolina? That’s the first primary where real Republicans will vote.
The Other Chuck
The silliness of primaries is purely a matter of the party’s own regulations, and shouldn’t involve courts or legislatures or any other federally regulated primary date. New Hampshire can go proudly and traditionally go fuck its proud tradition. Right up the proud traditional ass.
cckids
@Jamey: As a resident of NV, I should probably take offense to that . . . but, as a resident of NV, I am unable to.
debbie
@ cleter:
Thanks. I must not have been paying attention to Gramm
cleter
@debbie: No one did.