Word: florida
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...equally frustrated by all the Flori-duh jokes still rippling from the state's 2000 presidential recount debacle. But for all those laughs at its expense, that mess revealed what a crucial swing state Florida had become, and Crist feels the state was squandering its kingmaker cachet with a primary so late in the season. By leapfrogging ahead of the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday contests, the Sunshine State has landed in a larger national spotlight - and so has its irrepressibly sunny governor...
...without a price. If Florida's primary assertiveness stunned the country, it angered both the Democratic and Republican National Committees, whose rules forbade it. Both parties threatened sanctions; but only the DNC came down hard, refusing to seat Florida's delegates at the Democratic convention this summer, essentially nullifying the state's Democratic primary results. The RNC banned some of Florida's delegates too, but it wasn't about to go as draconian as the Dems - whose candidates even signed a pact not to campaign on the peninsula before the primary - and risk weakening the stature...
...Crist insists that Florida has won out in the larger picture. For one thing, he argues, Florida struck a much needed blow for reform of the nation's antiquated presidential nomination system. (After Florida moved up its primary, Michigan followed suit, holding its election Jan. 15. It received the same DNC punishment.) Even Florida Democrats agree. Says Congressman Robert Wexler, Barack Obama's Florida campaign chairman, "I think Florida has quite effectively started the move toward primary reform," which he and others hope by 2012 will include something like rotating regional primaries...
...What's more, just as Michigan's earlier primary garnered lots of attention for the issue of lost manufacturing jobs, Crist says Florida's concerns are far more front-and-center now than if its primary were held in the spring. "The attention being given this week to Florida and the issues we care about - tax reform, a national catastrophic insurance fund, Everlglades restoration - is huge," he says...
...spirit of working together that is exactly what Americans are yearning for right now. They're tired of the bickering, and they want a new way of doing things in Washington." The G.O.P. presidential hopefuls, intentionally or not, seemed to pick up on that in their debate at Florida Atlantic University last Thursday, displaying a more civil tone than the recent spats between Obama and Hillary Clinton - though the name-calling and nastiness between Romney and McCain in the last couple of days put an end to that civility...