I wouldn’t be so hard on the swing states (Florida, we can’t win without it, it should have no say? Ohio? Those are the keystone states that winner will usually carry)
I still don’t see how it can be fair unless everyone votes at the same time, whatever problems that may cause wouldn’t be worse than the current stupid system. You could have like an electoral college for delegates, states get more delegates the more Republicans they have and award the delegates proportionally, that would weigh it toward the Republican states but wouldn’t screw the millions of decent people in Cali and NY who deserve to have a vote. I don’t like the idea of not having a choice as to who the nominee is (like everyone in the final states to vote every election, it’s over before it gets to them) just cause I live in a bad state.
The delegates can actually serve a purpose by working it out if no one has a majority (in all likelihood no one would most of the time), like the old days. Romney wouldn’t have had a majority.
I agree with Impy, swing states definitely should have a say in who our nominee is. Nominating the local favorite in the Deep South and the Prairies may not be the best way to get to 270 in the general.
As for everyone voting at the same time, that would make insurgent candidacies all but futile, would not allow voters to winnow out those who can’t hack it, and would make candidates who can afford national ads the prohibitive favorites. Perhaps we shouldn’t have a single state go first, but neither should we have more than 3 or 4 states vote on the first primary day.
Frankly, I have no major problem with IA or NH going so early, and don’t believe that such states have given liberal Republicans an advantage. (Heck, if anything, having IA go first pretty much kills off any chance that a pro-abortion Republican could have early momentum, since the IA GOP electorate is vehemently pro-life.) My biggest concern is that states start to pile up rapidly right after SC, making it difficult for an insurgent who rallies conservatives to victory in the early states to be able to fundraise enough to be competitive in all those primaries taking place pretty much on a weekly basis thereafter.
Maybe we could have IA, NH and SC go on the first day, then NV, FL and MI go two weeks later, and then three more states two weeks after that, and so on and so forth.