Democrat infighting in Florida over presidential primary date

The Washington Post has the details:

The Democratic National Committee sought to seize control of its unraveling nominating process yesterday, rejecting pleas from state party leaders and cracking down on Florida for scheduling a Jan. 29 presidential primary.

The DNC’s rules and bylaws committee, which enforces party rules, voted yesterday morning to strip Florida of all its delegates to the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver — the harshest penalty at its disposal.

The penalty will not take effect for 30 days, and rules committee members urged officials from the nation’s fourth-most-populous state to use the time to schedule a later statewide caucus and thus regain its delegates.

By making an object lesson of Florida, Democrats hope to squelch other states’ efforts to move their voting earlier, which have created chaos in the primary structure that the national party has established. But the decision to sanction such a pivotal, vote-rich state has risks.

The party punished Delaware in 1996 for similar rules violations. But Florida, a mega-state that has played a pivotal role in the past two presidential elections, is different. The clash leaves the presidential candidates in limbo about how to campaign there.

Lawhawk notes the irony of it all here:

The DNC and RNC are both trying to keep state officials from messing with the schedules, and Dean is adamant about trying to maintain that order, but I really wonder what Dean and the DNC would do if Florida refuses.

They can’t exactly withhold the delegates, as it would indeed restrain Florida voters in their ability to select a candidate. The irony that Democrats would seek to do this in light of what happened in 2000 is striking.

This is something that the DNC had to do in order to ‘maintain order,’ as James Joyner points out, but all the same this will provide some good ammo for conservatives the next time some uber-lefty claims Bush ’stole’ the 2000 election.

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This is the big story this morning at Memeorandum, which has tons of links to related stories and blogger reax.