Sunday, January 06, 2013

Freshman Republican Legislator throws down...on the entire state of Iowa

Republican Phil Lovas (R-Peoria), a Representative-elect in the new LD22 (basically the old LD4) has prefiled HB2017.

If passed, it would move the date of Arizona's presidential preference primary to the same date as Iowa's presidential caucuses, unless Iowa is no longer "first in the nation", then it would be held earlier.

These schemes crop up every four years or so.  Often, they even result in intra-party showdowns and brinksmanship (like when Florida was penalized half of its delegates to the national convention by the GOP), but they rarely result in real changes - Iowa has the first presidential caucuses and New Hampshire has the first presidential primaries.

Why?  I don't have a simple answer (and I truly don't believe that there is a simple answer here), but I do have an observation:

The proponents of these schemes always seem to argue that Iowa and New Hampshire don't necessarily have to be "first in the nation", but they never seem to have a good argument why their state should be.

Apparently, it's Arizona's turn to whine.


For the record, I don't think that there is any coincidence that the person proposing the particular bill is from the same area as Jack Harper, the soon-to-be former state legislator and constant source of subject material.

There's just gotta be something in the water there...

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