Time to hang it up with all the lawsuits and pretense. Time to be honest indeed. Both Rubio and the Democratic spokesperson agreed Florida Democrats were on board as early as March 2006.
There should be no more pretending they were caught off guard. No more lawsuits like Nelson's pretending it is a racial issue. It should just stop. It was all apparently planned.
Florida's Primary ProblemNobody realized it, but the storm began gathering in late March 2006. New Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, a Miami Republican, visited Washington-based Florida reporters and touted a plan to boost Florida's influence in picking presidential nominees by moving the primary earlier than March.
"With all due respect to New Hampshire and Iowa, nowhere are you going to be on a national stage like Florida," Rubio said at the time. "You're going to get questions about Israel, Latin America, immigration. It's the old South, it's Latin, it's Midwestern, it's rural and urban."
Rubio already had Democrats on board.
"Florida Democrats are all for it," Mark Bubriski, spokesman for the Florida Democratic Party, said at the time.
Nobody sued McAuliffe when he threatened Michigan.
"Expletives were flying. The head of the Democratic National Committee was having it out with Sen. Carl Levin because Michigan wanted to crash the rarefied club of early presidential primary states.
Move your primary too early, Terry McAuliffe warned, and Michigan will lose half its delegates to the 2004 Democratic convention.
"The closest they'll get to Boston will be watching it on television," McAuliffe vowed. "I will not let you break this entire nominating process for one state. The rules are the rules."
Could it be no one sued Terry because
Carl Levin and Terry McAuliffe made a deal about primaries in 2004.
