Stop The Madness - The Primaries Edition

It's really starting to wear me down.

The constant jockeying for each state to have their primary/caucus/convention before every other has now gone past ridiculous: Wyoming Republicans have announced they will be holding their nominating convention on January 5^th, 2007.

This means that both Iowa and New Hampshire will be forced by their state laws to move their contests to sometime in December of this year. It's insane.

The ever-changing contest schedule -- and the earlier start to the balloting -- has created an enormous level of discomfort for national parties trying to impose discipline on the states as well as presidential campaigns trying to figure out strategies when voting could begin in just four months.

As a deterrence, the Republican National Committee insists they will penalize states that schedule nominating contests before Feb. 5 by withholding delegates to the conventions next summer.

As if that has deterred states from scheduling their contests earlier. So far Florida hasn't caved to the DNC's demand that they change their date or forfeit their delegates at the Democratic Convention next summer. Will Wyoming's Republican's give in to the RNC's demands?

If this type of madness continues, all that will happen is a weakening of the nomination process to the point where it will become meaningless. Presidential campaigns will start the day after the President takes the Oath of Office. Campaigns will be never ending and, quite possibly, the people will stop paying any attention to them.

I'm almost tempted to suggest that perhaps, this time around, both Iowa and New Hampshire sit this one out and let the rest of the friggin' loonies duke it out and show everyone how stupid the states' party committees have become. By compressing the schedule with heavy front loading all these idiots have done is to limit such campaigns only to the wealthy. The problem with that is that far too often the wealthy haven't got a clue about what the American people want or need (just use John Kerry's presidential run as an example). The candidates with real ideas and true integrity may not have the ability to run because they don't have money to play “in the big leagues” with the rest of the well funded, if less than acceptable candidates.

This BS has got to stop.