With the 2008 presidential election in full swing, politicians in Washington D.C. are busying themselves not with making the Bush tax cuts permanent or winning the War on Terror, but with presidential primaries.  Amanda Knowles over at American Observer has a great breakdown of the various proposals that are currently before Congress, ranging from a national primary where all states would hold their elections on the same day to regional primaries where states would be grouped together and vote as a block.    

The problem, as the politicians see it, is that states that do not hold their primaries early enough essentially have no say in who the presidential nominee will be.  The Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire Primary historically being the first in the nation have, pundits have offered, to much of an influence on who the Republicans and Democrats pick to be their nominees. 

As I see it there are three problems with the government’s attempt to “fix the primary”. 

First, the RNC and the DNC are private organizations who should be able to determine on their own and without government interference how to best choose their nominee. They have set up rules that have been adopted by their organization to handle presidential primaries and Congress should defer to them on how to choose their candidate.

Second, with a finite amount of campaign dollars, campaigns have to decide where to spend their dollars.  By holding a national primary, candidates would be forced to spend their dollars in states with the most delegates, mainly California, Texas, New York, Florida and Ohio.  That would leave smaller states out in the cold and unlikely to see any presidential candidates during the primaries.  If regional primaries are held, candidates would have to spend all of their time and money in the first region, leaving little left over for efforts in the later regions.  

Third, the concern that the early states will have too much of a say in who will be the nominee has been stood on its head this year.  Look at Texas and Ohio, who will hold their primaries on March 4^th.  By having a highly contested Primary Election battle, these two late states may actually have a bigger say in who the presidential nominee will be than the early states. 

The best course of action is for Congress to butt out of a private organizations affairs and let the political parties decide the best way to chose their presidential nominees.