Poppagater, I went tooling around the web after seeing your post about Florida. That is not quite an accurate representation. According to several news articles I read (and I didn't keep track of them, but they were all reputable. It appears the legislature in Florida - both Democracts and Republicans, ignored their parties admonishments about moving the primary ahead of Feb. 5. The Florida House passed the measure unanimously. I couldn't find the vote count in the Florida Senate (and don't pretend that I looked very hard,) , but apparently it passed by a wide margin there also, supported strongly by legislators from both parties, but not supported by the parties themselves. One article, I think the NYT, but am not sure, indicated the national Republican party also sanctioned Florida, but did not specify what the sanctions were. It did indicate the Deomcratic party sanctions were more stringent.

Although my reading was pretty quick, it was a good quick education on the rationale behind trying to keep most primaries from happening earlier and earlier. There are some good reasons for it, including that extending the primary season even beyond it's too long length now absolutely erases the slightest chance that anyone but the absolute biggest money candidates have a snowball's chance in hell.