Flordia Jumps the Gun With Its Primary and It Pays Off, Why It Might Reshape the Campaign Map January 29, 2012

A lengthy piece in ‘Ppolitico’ on how Flordia Republilcans ignored the RNC and got away with it:
Most of the ballots are still uncast in Florida’s presidential primary, but already Republicans here are declaring: mission accomplished.
It’s not that they suffer from an overabundance of confidence about defeating President Barack Obama in the general election. For Florida Republicans, the early primary is a victory in itself – the culmination of a long campaign to upset the presidential nominating calendar and seize huge influence over the selection of a 2012 nominee.
In order to hold a January primary, they defied Democratic and Republican party rules, invited penalties against their delegates at next summer’s convention and infuriated party leaders in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Now, Florida party leaders say they have every intention of making sure their unofficial status as the first mega-state primary becomes a permanent feature of presidential politics – not a one-off decision to crash the 2012 calendar, but an irreversible blow to the traditional early-state monopoly.
“We’ve achieved the goal of maximizing Floridians’ voices and impact on the election,” said Florida House Speaker Dean Cannon, who supported the Jan. 31 primary date. “Whether we’re always specifically fourth or not is not as important as acknowledging that Florida is so diverse – demographically and economically and geographically – that makes it a great proving group and potentially decisive state in parties choosing their nominees.”
Cannon said the goal was never to blow up the party-sanctioned 2012 calendar, but rather to ensure that Florida is the first state where candidates are forced to run a “national-level, quality media campaign with radio, TV, et cetera.”
“We tried to show complete respect to the traditional early primary states that went before us. They give the candidates the chance to demonstrate their retail skills,” said Cannon, a former Rick Perry supporter who’s now neutral in the primary. “I’m hopeful that the parties will recognize that this is a smart and good way to go about it.”
Respectful or not to the Iowa-New Hampshire-South Carolina axis, Florida’s decision to hold its primary on Jan. 31 openly flouted Republican and Democratic National Committee rules saying that only the three longtime early states, plus Nevada, could vote before March.
When a commission empaneled by the Florida legislature chose to keep the Jan. 31 date – the same day Florida Republicans voted in 2008 – it forced Iowa and New Hampshire to move their elections forward and ended up overshadowing Nevada’s long-suffering caucus.
Missouri’s February 7th primary is mandated by state law. But the non-binding ‘beauty cntest’ has attracted almost no attention by the GOP candidates.
Ask virtually any Florida Republican why the state deserves special status and you’ll get the same answer: it’s huge, heterogeneous, soon to be the third-largest state in the country and it’s critical to the general election.

Perhaps most importantly, strategists in both parties say, by confronting the early states and their national party, Florida Republicans pointed the way for other states to do the same in 2016. Already, Republicans in Arizona and Michigan have decided to follow suit, holding their primaries on the less provocative, but still rule-breaking date of Feb. 28.
The state GOP will pay for its defiance – sort of. Florida’s delegation to the convention in Tampa will be cut in half and their delegates will be docked certain privileges and perks there. The state could be headed for another convention smackdown when it tries to seat its delegates on a winner-take-all basis. Primaries held before April are supposed to hand out their delegates proportionally – another rule Florida has declined to follow.
Read Moore: http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=A3E531C3-AD55-4ACE-8839-395CA6A75A34