Florida chose to ignore the primary concerns

Folks keep asking: Who were the dummies responsible for Florida's early presidential primary, anyway?

That would be your friendly local member of the state Legislature.

The vote in the state House was 118 to 0.

The vote in the state Senate was 37 to 2.

Democrats were for it. Republicans were for it. The governor was for it.

Everybody was for it back in 2007, when the Legislature did this.

Now and then, you will hear a Democrat claim, "We didn't want to! It was those mean old Republicans!''

But this would be more convincing if the votes were not 118-0 and 37-2. (The two "no" voters were Republicans.)

Now, when Florida did this, did Florida know the national parties would not like it?

Yes, indeed.

But Florida did it anyway. Florida thought an early election would be a bigger deal.

For this violation, the national Republicans said to Florida: You are punished. You lose half your delegates.

And Florida Republicans took it quietly. They accepted the consequences. The Republican candidates kept coming anyway. Florida was a big deal for the Republicans, after all.

The Democrats, on the other hand, were all worried about offending Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Here is my own thinking about Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina:

$%#.

But the Democrats all signed a holy-holy pledge not to campaign in Florida, or Michigan, or anyplace else that tried to intrude on the turf of those early states.

It was sort of a "He-Man Woman Haters Club," like in The Little Rascals, except the targets were Florida and Michigan, instead of Darla.

All right, fair enough. They gave us the shaft. They chose to suck up to the early states. That's life.

Except …

Except that just as soon as the early states voted, they were yesterday's date. Nobody even left any money on the dresser in Des Moines.

And all of a sudden, since Clinton had "won" the Florida primary, and since Obama wasn't even on the Michigan ballot, she started clamoring about "counting every vote."

The result of all this, as you know, was that the national Democratic Party laughed Clinton and the complaining states right out of the room.

Ha, ha! No, I am just kidding. The result was the Democrats held a giant dither-session over this past weekend and ended up …

Ended up agreeing to count half of the delegate votes, which seemed to satisfy nobody. King Solomon didn't really mean that bit about the baby, you know.

This turns out to be a perfect metaphor for American society, which does not believe in consequences for our actions. In fact, we resent consequences.

True for both borrowers and lenders of shaky debt. True for smoking- and diet-related disease. True for rich kids who plow their cars into trees. True, above all, for politicians, who say X on Tuesday and deny it on Wednesday, since we will have forgotten anyway, while the networks go on to the latest celebrity news.

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