The rules committee that’s considering these changes does apparently contain some grassroots conservatives, but I … can’t shake the feeling that the new arrangement is designed to benefit establishment candidates more so than tea-party ones.

The good news: Fewer debates with later primaries is good for everyone’s sanity. The bad news: There’s no easier blog traffic than a lazy debate-night open thread. The big A’s loss is America’s gain, my friends.

Zitat

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Priebus and other top party figures have made no secret of their desire to scale back the number of debates, which offered little-known candidates such as Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain a chance to shine but forced Mitt Romney, the eventual nominee, to publicly stake out a number of conservative positions that came back to haunt him in the general election…

The first four early-voting states — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada — would continue to hold their contests in February.

To prevent other states from jumping the order and compelling the first four to move their dates even earlier as they did in 2012, any state that attempts to hold its nominating contest before March 1 would have their number of delegates to the convention slashed to just nine people or, in the case of smaller states, one-third of their delegation — whichever number is smaller…

Any state holding a primary or caucus during the first two weeks of March must award its delegates proportionally, rather than winner-take-all.

The measure is designed to prevent a candidate from catching fire in the early states and then riding a burst of momentum to winner-take-all victories in expensive, delegate-rich states such as Florida or Texas. The early March window would give underfunded, insurgent candidates a chance to prove their mettle.

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A few reactions in no particular order.

-SNIP-

Read more:http://hotair.com/archives/2013/12/11/rn...ention-in-june/