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The Florida primary boondoggle

Remember when all the states were rushing to move their primaries earlier? Sure you do -- it was about as fascinating as watching paint dry. Absolutely riveting stuff. Well, now its time to pay the piper.

[UPDATE2]
Florida Democratic Party officially declares FL voters will be "disenfranchised" on state web site

...Florida Democrats believe any approach other than a Jan. 29 election would disenfranchise voters...

First some background. When FL moved its primary to January 29, the vote in the FL legislature was 115:1 for doing so. Where I come from this is known as "strong bipartisan support". Remember that 115:1 vote number, it will be important in just a moment. It turned out that there was in fact one sane democrat in FL at the time -- the one who voted against the change.

Now we fast forward to August and see a story like this one where the DNC is threatening to strip Florida of its delegates unless it moves its primary to a later date.

Democrats decided Saturday to strip Florida of all its presidential convention delegates unless the state holds its primary later in the 2008 election calendar. The punishment would leave the fourth largest state without a vote for the nominee...

...Members of the Democratic National Committee's rules panel expressed skepticism that Florida Democrats did enough to stop the change and they approved the harshest penalty.

115:1. Lets repeat that, 115:1 for changing the date. The DNC rules panel kinda has a point here. The 115:1 vote isn't exactly what I'd call "robust opposition". In fact, some might even say it was along the lines of active collaboration.

Remember that - active collaboration, because now we see this story where the Tampa Tribune is trying to lay the blame on republicans in the Florida legislature:

...Last spring, the Florida Legislature, dominated by Republicans, voted to hold the state primary Jan. 29, regardless of the parties' rules, making Florida the largest state to vote early.

Some Democratic legislators favored the move as well...

"Some Democratic legislators" -- that's an interesting way to put it when the vote was 115:1. "some" == "all but one".

Here's the press release from Governor Crist's signing ceremony in West Palm Beach May 21.

...He was joined at the bill signing ceremony by Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Arthur Anderson, Congressman Robert Wexler, bill sponsors Representatives David Rivera (R-Miami) and Dorothy Hukill (R-Port Orange) and Senators Lee Constantine (R-Altamonte Springs) and Jeremy Ring (D-Margate) and other legislators...

Anderson is a hard core moonbat democrat, as is Wexler. I'm not familiar with Ring. Apparently they were all down with this move if they showed up at the signing ceremony.

So now we have the curious case of the FL Democratic Party Chairwoman (Karen thurman) accusing the DNC of "disenfranchising" FL democrats.

...“We’re going to fight for all of our delegates,” Ms. Thurman said. “The disenfranchisement is on their hands.”...

To be fair, the Florida republicans are in pretty much the same boat with the RNC.

[UPDATE1]
Also blogging this hilarious FL political meltdown is Captain Ed