Get Ready for the Incumbent Enablement Act of 2015

This week in Raleigh, the General Assembly will very likely move up the 2016 primary elections  to the Ides of March -- for all offices, from the White House to the Courthouse.

Meaning, primarily, that challengers to incumbents will have far less time to make their case, whether they're challenging a sitting (squatting?) county commissioner or a posturing U.S. Senator.

Republicans in the General Assembly want to make North Carolina a playah and attract some of that national money from aspiring presidential campaigns. They're tired of being irrelevant in picking the next Republican nominee, since in the recent past, the ultimate nominees have been decided well before North Carolinians got to vote in May.

The forward push for the 2016 primaries will also mean an accelerated filing-for-office period. Filing for county commissioner, school board, state House and Senate, and on up to U.S. Congress and U.S. Senate (not to mention governor and the entire Council of State) will open this December.

We're at the mercy of manipulators, prima donnas, and gut-busted little dictators in Raleigh.

Trying To Make Itself More Important, NC GOP Just Makes Itself Smaller

NC GOP "jobs plan"

Here's the thing: Republican big-wigs in the NC General Assembly thought it would be too cool if they rewrote the law and forced the state's presidential primaries waaay up into February, or to be more precise, to the first Tuesday after the South Carolina presidential primary.

See, 'cause, those early presidential primary states get all this MONEY pumped into campaigning, and NC Republican politicians got all starry-eyed at the thought of, say, Jeb Bush battling it out with Scott Walker and Rand Paul (or whoever). Plus there's also the national prominence of appearing to actually matter. Because North Carolina's usual primary day in May is long after everything has been decided (usually). So North Carolina's presidential preferences get a big national "meh" ... unless it was when Democrats chose Obama over Clinton in the May primary of 2008.

But there's a worm in this rose bud. The Republican National Committee will punish North Carolina Republicans severely for messing up their carefully calculated presidential primary schedule. Moving a presidential primary to an earlier date is called "jumping the line." Florida did it and lost the bulk of its convention delegates in retaliation. Florida did not like that.

If North Carolina does indeed hold a presidential primary on the first Tuesday after South Carolina's presidential primary -- which is actually the law at the moment, signed by Governor Squishy -- then NC will have its National Republican Convention delegates cut from 72 to 12.

Why would 2016 Republican presidential hopefuls spend big advertising bucks, not to mention salaries for field representatives, for just 12 convention delegates?

They won't.

Long article detailing all the infighting, which is most interesting because it quotes Josh Putnam, a professor at Appalachian State University, "who runs the web site Frontloading HQ, which covers the presidential primary system in obsessive detail." We do have a weakness for "obsessive detail."