Michigan and Missouri Messing with Caucus Date

Michigan and Missouri Messing with Caucus Date

Keep using pencil on those 2012 calendars, and have an eraser handy. Tow more states are trying to cut in the caucus line.

First up are our esteemed and dear friends from the Great Lakes State. (In the old political sense that the more honorifics you pile on the mroe you loathe each other.) They're pointing toward February 28. That's the day South Carolina is supposed to have and that Arizona has already stepped on.

National Republican rues say calendar cheaters lose half their delegates, and unlike the Democrats (attn: Rep. Wasserman Schultz) they actually enforced those rules last year. But it was much less of a controversy; the early states just decided that losing half the delegates was an acceptable tradeoff.

Assuming Michigan follows through, the question becomes the ripple effect on the rest of the calendar. Is Arizona satisfied with sharing 2/28? If so, we could still be looking at Feb. 1 or 3. (Here's my logic behind that.)

But now throw Missouri into the mix. Last cycle they were on old Super Duper Tuesday, the 20+ first week of February that I dubbed Überdienstag. That law is still in effect. Earlier in the year the legislature was trying to move into March but the law got stalled because of other election issues like photo ID. Now another bill focused on the date itself seems to be stalled by general cluelessness:

Sen. Crowell brought up things like:

I've never heard from anyone from the national party who asked us to move to March.
Why should the national party tell us how to run our primary?
This is nothing more than the national party trying to rig the system to pick the nominees they want.

Then there was this exchange between the bill's Senate handler, Kevin Engler (R-3rd, Farmington) and Sen. Crowell [These are direct quotes.]:

Engler: "Will the [national] party strip us of our delegates?"

Crowell: "I don't care. I don't care."

Without action, The Show Me State defaults to February 7, which pushes the whole early state calendar back into January and probably puts Iowa somewhere like January 9. Horrible but still better than last time.