Lead of the day

The Associated Press, in a story wrapping up the havoc wrecked on campaign schedules by an ice storm that paralyzed much of usually weather-tough Iowa, nails it: "Ah, that Florida primary looks pretty good right now. "

The piece includes a typically well-turned quote from Mike Huckabee, providing yet another example of the style that has fueled his improbable rise in the Republican presidential race. You can read all of it here.

White House contenders unaffected by the bad weather included Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and Republican Rudy Giuliani, each of whom showed impressive prescience by spending part of their day in California (Clinton in San Francisco, Obama in L.A. and Giuliani in Santa Monica).

Giuliani, though, needs to make it to Iowa in time for an afternoon debate Wednesday among the GOP candidates. The Democrats have a similar clash set for Thursday.

The AP story notes that the Florida primary will be held Jan. 29. It does not note that the Democratic candidates have been refusing to actively campaign in Florida because, in order to hog some attention, it muscled ahead of an assemblage of other states with primaries on Feb. 5.

The Florida situation is one reason why we hope that chieftains in both parties will sit down after this campaign ends and take another stab at formulating a more rational caucus/primary schedule. Personally, we'd love to see Hawaii move to the head of the pack.

-- Don Frederick

Comments

[Steve]

Hopefully Governor Huckabee can get some rest and be fresh for the debate tomorrow at 1pm. He needed a break! www.mikehuckabee.com

[How Many People Live in Iowa?]

Am I the only one who thinks it is ridiculous that such a small and non-diverse state such as Iowa has so much importance in choosing who will be the next presidential candidate? Although I think it could have been done more artfully, a move away from allowing small states that don't really represent the rest of the country sounds like a good thing to me.

(About 3 million.)