Look, no hissy-fit quotes by anonymous disgruntled RNC members, no grandstanding by Rules committee members and no bad PR in Florida. The RNC follows suit and punishes the states that are shuffling their calendar:
The Republican National Committee plans to penalize at least five states holding early primaries, including New Hampshire and Florida, by refusing to seat at least half of their delegates at the national convention in 2008, a party official said yesterday....
"The rules are clear," said Tracey Schmitt, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee. "Any state that holds their primary outside of the window shall be penalized delegates." States are not allowed to hold primaries before Feb. 5.
In addition to Florida and New Hampshire, Wyoming, Michigan and South Carolina also face sanctions for moving up their primaries. Two other early nominating states -- Iowa and Nevada -- will escape Republican sanctions because they hold nonbinding caucuses, not primaries.
Those states will lose "half their delegates" to convention. Likewise, the Florida Republicans didn't hold a conference call and whine, or talk about suing the RNC, like the Democratic minority in Florida did over the DNC's decision. The Florida Republicans just shrugged and stated the obvious: ""I am confident that all 114 delegates from Florida will be seated," said Jim Greer, the chairman of the Florida Republican Party."
This is only going to be a problem if either of the conventions is brokered, and then all hell is likely to break loose:
If the nomination is not settled by the time of the conventions, the issue of delegates could become crucial. If delegates are not seated, they cannot cast votes. But even if the nomination is largely settled, the battles over seating delegates and accommodating main figures from these states at the convention could hamper the party's unity going into the general election -- something national and state officials said they were hoping to avoid.
"My expectation is that, in the end, all the delegates are going to be seated," Mr. Anuzis said, "because the party is going to want to be united going into the general election."
That's true enough, and the penalty will wind up being some trivial penalty like their delegation having back of the hall seats and hotel rooms on the outskirts of Minneapolis or Denver, during the conventions. The easy solution for the states seems to be to have the non-binding caucuses, at least for the Republican Party, which has different rules. For the Democratic states that go early, if the contest winds up brokered, we'd supposedly see the convention fight, as they would have no delegates seated, but with all the time till the convention, they'd have plenty of time to set a state caucus as well, or even some sort of state committee meeting that awards delegates according to the previous primary results.
In the article, a Republican points to the idea that we are likely to see a federal push to their becoming a national primary day. The possibilities of that legislation passing seem questionable, I don't see the clamoring for it to happen. The de facto national primary date of Feb 5th had another state officially join, Minnesota, with their caucuses now planed for February 5th.
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myDD - skin
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