Last night I watched a panel on C-Span promoting the idea of keeping New Hampshire as the first Primary without adding any other early caucuses/primaries to the calendar. I have generally been of the opinion that Iowa & New Hampshire get way too much clout in choosing the nominees, but I have to admit that some good and valid points were raised in the panel discussion and I'm not sure how I feel about it now. What the panel lacked was a group supporting the pros of adding additional early events, so I don't feel I should make up my mind yet. Therefore I thought I present some of the arguments I heard in favor of leaving Iowa and New Hampshire alone and then let you guys tell my why that is a bullshit idea. Then I'll decide what I think about it.
First, they made a good point that neither the sitting president or the last president won the NH Primary...they both came in 2nd place. I found that important because one of the main gripes that I hear is that Iowa and NH get to pick our nominee and the rest of the country has no say. However, what I found much more important than that is the argument that if we frontload the primary/caucus schedule that candidates will not have enough time to do any real grass roots campaigning in any of the early states, and as a result will rely even more on T.V. ads and stump speeches, as opposed to going door to door, and talking with people instead of to them at malls, grocery stores, coffe shops, and community events. I saw a valid point there. If we have 4-6 events in 10-16 days the candidates won't be able to spend any real time in any of the states, and ergo the person with the most money will most likely win because of the power of advertising. Also, if we have too many early events then we will for SURE have our nominee picked in the first month of primaries and then we'll have a hell of a lot of time before the convention with no excitement. With an incumbent to run against that could be advantageous because we would have someone to compare our guy against, but in 2008 with 2 open fields, that might not be so great. I'd love to hear your thoughts on whether we should change the primary schedule and why. Fire away!!