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.
Yeah NH might be somewhat of a problem, not so much Iowa. Unless the issue is farm pork I suppose, the caucus goers in Iowa are a pretty conservative group.
I’d just as soon not see the same states go first every time though just cause of tradition. They don’t want to give it up of course because it’s a boon for the local economies for every to get overrun with people every 4 years. Pretty much racketeering if you ask me.