Your first point in the debate is irrelevant as a result so there's no sense discussing the rest of your book.
There are two separate problems with your point, if I'm understanding you correctly.
First, let's go to the actual text of the Constitution and what it says about regulating election rules.
I'm assuming you're referring to Article I, section 4, and its provision that “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.”
The point of the Constitution is that states have the primary role in setting election rules but Congress may overrule them with regard to federal elections if there is a public purpose in doing so.
This clause is part of the constitutional foundation of the 1960’s era civil rights laws giving federal review over state election laws to the federal government, which, to put it mildly, is a rather controversial issue in conservative circles. I'm all for defending minority voting rights and fair elections, but is federal review of state voting laws for civil rights compliance really needed in an era when the President is African-American, the former head of the Republican National Committee is African-American, and until recently a leading Republican presidential candidate appealing to the most conservative parts of the Republican Party was African-American?
However, here's an example of how that clause can work which probably won't be controversial. Not that many years ago, Congress decided to require that a federal ballot be provided to military personnel who haven't met state deadlines to register to vote but showed up even as late as election day and wanted to vote in the presidential election. I don't have a problem with that.
The Constitution presumes that there will be a variety of procedures in each state. Why is diversity bad?
The second problem with your point is that the Constitution says nothing about political parties. We're talking here about primaries and caucuses, not the general election. If the Republican Party doesn't like the way a state has set its election laws — an example is my own state of Missouri — it, as a private organization, has every right to decide to select the national convention delegates via a caucus system completely independent of the state-approved election process.
The federal government has **ABSOLUTELY** no business telling the political parties how to handle their own internal affairs. The private organization status of the parties doesn't come up often since in most cases the leaders of the parties are also leaders in government, but it does happen sometimes, and one of those times happened this year in Missouri when the Republican Party decided that it wasn't going to do things the way our Democratic governor and Democratic secretary of state wanted, and the Republican-controlled legislature didn't take action in time to fix the problem. (I'm simplifying here, details of the Missouri mess aren't relevant to my point.)
This becomes a **MUCH** bigger deal when a state legislature is heavily dominated by one political party and tries to dictate rules to the minority party, or if a Congress controlled by one party tried to dictate rules to states controlled by the other party.
Federalism exists for a reason, and centralized control is to be avoided whenever possible. For a few things (national defense being one) central control is not just helpful but critical. Most other decisions are best made at the state and local levels — and that includes election rules.
We have no disagreement that what happened in Virginia was bad. However, it seems to me that the Virginia, as a major state, did what it was supposed to do, namely, exposing which candidates didn't have sufficient organization to meet stringent ballot access requirements. I never expected that Gingrich or Perry would have problems meeting those rules and this exposed serious weaknesses in both of their campaigns.
Stuff happens. Candidates can recover from missteps, but for a long-term experienced political leader like Gingrich or Perry, the problem shouldn't have happened in the first place.