Tallahassee—Florida Senate President Mike Haridopolos is determined to move Florida’s primary into the fifth position, sometime in early 2012. The RNC has frowned upon the idea, not wanting to upset the process and move early primaries into the 2011 Holiday season.
Haridopolos told the Florida Federation of Republican Women’s State Conference that Senator Marco Rubio supports the move. RNC national committeewoman Sharon Day warned of severe penalties should Florida move the date.
haridolpolos
Such penalties could include loss of the Republican National Convention, loss of delegates to the convention, loss of guest passes and poor location for the Florida delegation.
Developing…
We ought to wait until the beginning of March. Why are we in such a hurry? Republicans will benefit from allowing this process to play out a little longer. Last time we did it (the nominating process) early and hurried it up with winner-take-all rules, and conservatives were not satisfied with the end result (McCain).
Making Florida an early state means only big money candidates can compete and retail politics is by and large cast aside in a state with 18 million people. The current early states are small, with less-expensive media markets and the opportunity for candidates to have to interact with many voters face to face.
The system we have set up for 2012 has four early states start the process in January/February, the next round in March will still have delegates split proportionally, and then finally from April on the delegates will be awarded as winner-take-all. There is a rhyme and a reason for doing this: we will end up nominating a better (and hopefully more conservative) candidate at the end of this process.
Troy Schoonover
Pensacola Republican Club
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Pensacola-Republican-Club/176031715772233?sk=info