The Accelerated Primary Season

I know I'm probably alone in this, but I have a simple solution to what the blovacracy calls the "accelerated primary season" (that is, the attempt by other, more populous and diverse states to have some actual, honest-to-God say in the Presidential primaries, rather than just leaving it all up to Iowa and New Hampshire).

Lately, a lot of states have been moving their primaries up to February and even January, in an attempt to give their states some relevance, rather than having so much influence being held by the predominantly-white, small population states of Iowa and New Hampshire. Which seems reasonable to me; as I carped in an earlier post, I got tired of living in California and having no say in picking my party's Presidential candidate. Iowa and New Hampshire are responding to this effrontery by moving their primaries and caucuses even earlier, to the point where Iowa may end up having their caucus in December of 2007 (believe it if you can). I get the impression that Iowa would move their caucus to the first Wednesday in November the day after the election if that's what it took to keep their "first caucus" status.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I've got nothing against Iowa or New Hampshire. Nothing. I just think it's absurd that these two highly-unrepresentative states have so much say over who gets to be President. We can see where this has gotten us the last several times around (Dukakis! Mondale! Bush! Kerry!), and I think it's high time we made some changes. And given that Iowa has a law that requires they have the first caucus in the nation, there only one obvious way to do it:

Pass a law.

Yup. Time for those Congressmen and women and Senators who spend time grubbing for money for bridges to nowhere, who hide bricks of money in their fridge, who pass resolutions to rename french fries "freedom fries" and try to pass idiotic amendments to the constitution to outlaw flag burning (yeah, that's a huge issue that keeps me up at night) to get off their duffs and tell the good folks from Iowa and New Hampshire that enough's enough, and that it's someone else's turn now. I don't care who; make it a rotation, or something. Start in Minnesota or New Mexico for all I care. But Iowa and New Hampshire have had it long enough, and someone else should have a turn.

I'm not holding my breath, though. And my Uncle John (resident of Derry) is going to kill me.