Duh!

U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez, new chairman of the Republican National Committee, told the Buzz on Wednesday that he warned the Legislature and Gov. Charlie Crist what the consequences would be for Florida if the state moved its primary up.

Florida officials chose to move it to Jan. 29 anyway -- violating Republican party rules.

"Once I made sure they knew they couldn't come to me and say 'Gee, Mel but you're the chairman'...then that's all I did,'' Martinez said."The party's rules are inflexible but the party also understands that the states are free to do what they will. They just need to know the consequences of what they do."

Martinez predicts other states will want to move up their primaries now too. "It is probably going to be a free for all. For the future we may need to think about how we control the process better and we may need to think about a national primary day or something like that. "

LSB: We DO have a national primary day or something like that, Mel - it's called Election Day! Why are we fucking with all of these different primaries, making some states more important and others seemingly inconsequential? Isn't there something we can do to shorten the damn election process, reduce the cost to taxpayers and the amount of money needed to run, and maybe do something about the influence-peddling of big donors by requiring fewer of them?

I know: one primary day so that each party may determine their candidate, using the current electoral college system if you want; a month later we'll have the conventions, requiring that the state delegates vote for the candidate that won the state vote (on the first ballot only and a free-for-all at the convention if that doesn't work); and then the party conventions can nominate and vote on the winner's vice-presidential candidate. A month later, after two mandated debates, we have Election Day. Presto! We're done!

And while we're at it, we actually have telecommunications systems in place that would allow for one-person/one-vote and we don't need the electoral crap any more. That may have been a necessary evil 225 years ago, but it is no longer necessary or desirable (as we saw in the 2000 election, where the popular vote and the electoral vote produced different winners).

Let's get on the bandwagon, folks, and get this taken care of before the next election. Who wants to get this started?