Captain Ed notes something odd [1], but not unexpected, in Florida:
For once, Howard Dean is right, and he’s likely to pay a large price for it. Dean warned Florida Democrats that he would refuse to certify their delegates [2] at the Democratic National Convention in 2008 for their participation in fouling up the primary schedule, which has Florida Democrats irate:
Florida lawmakers angrily assailed the Democratic National Committee and its chairman, Howard Dean, saying he is threatening to “disenfranchise” the state’s voters by considering a plan to invalidate the state’s presidential primary.The DNC’s rules committee is to vote today whether to sanction Florida for violating party rules by moving its primary up to Jan. 29 and violating a party rule against holding a primary before Feb. 5. The action would deny Florida its delegates at the party’s national convention next year and prohibit Democratic presidential candidates from campaigning in the state before the primary.
In a conference call with reporters yesterday, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) said the DNC “is poised to assault the basic right of a person to vote at its meeting tomorrow.” He threatened to sue the national party to prevent the sanctions from being imposed.
The ban would extend to the candidates themselves. If the DNC followed through on this threat, the presidential candidates would be barred from campaigning in Florida during the primaries.
Leave it to the Democrats to find a new way to shoot themselves in the foot. Does anybody really think that enforcement of this particular rule is going to help Democrats get elected to office?
And in reality, this Florida situation is the result of them are falling around with Nevada, Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina’s primaries in an effort to up the number of Hispanic and black voters in the early primaries. In short, they screwed themselves, because as it turns out the voters in and other states don’t like having their gravitas lessened.
I’d like you to consider something, however… it’s something the democrats don’t dare say, publicly, and of course the news media isn’t going to touch it, either. The dirty little secret, what they’re not telling you, is this;
The Democrats wouldn’t be so busy stirring the pot on this, if they didn’t figure they needed to. But why would they need to? The fact of the matter is they are losing influence amongst minorities… particularly blacks and Hispanics, who are increasingly showing up in rolls of Republican voters.
(Edit:Bit, Link repaired)
Update: HotAir’s got the story [3]