Thursday, August 09, 2007

The Primary-Calendar Shuffle   [John Hood]

There is something wrong with much of the coverage of South Carolina's impending primary change: the theme that this decision comes as a surprise and injects "uncertainty" (as The Washington Post put it ) into the campaign.

Uh-uh. It's been obvious for months that South Carolina was not going to let Florida leap-frog its first-in-the-South primary. It's also been obvious that South Carolina's decision would have a carom-effect on New Hampshire and possibly Iowa. The campaigns have all known about this, and if they don't have plans to adjust strategy and spending to earlier dates, including December ones, they're incompetent. The exact dates may not have been known, but everyone has had the general idea for a while.

South Carolina's decision was bound to cause a solid ripple of coverage, but what I've seen in the past 24 hours is more about a slow, sweltering August than any big "news."

08/09 09:37 AMShare