From Tampa, Florida -
After watching Florida and other states go early in the primary and caucus process the last two elections, Republicans at their convention today will vote on a rule change to strengthen the punishment for states that move their party contests before March.
"We kind of have the nuclear option," said Secretary of State Brian Kemp of Georgia, who backed the idea of stronger penalties against states like Florida, which garnered immense attention by jumping into a slot behind Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.
"If you go early, you only get 12 delegates," said Kemp, who argued the current rules that cut Florida's delegation in half just didn't have the punishment needed to deter both states and candidates.
"It's going to make the candidates think long and hard if you have a Florida or even another big state go forward," Kemp added.
For a number of years, the two parties have struggled to keep order in the ranks when it comes to where states should be on the schedule, often threatening punishment but never really following through.
"Everybody wants to be the most important state," said former RNC Chair Ken Blackwell.
"A lot of table pounding and tough talk, those don't really work if you're not willing to pull the trigger" on tough punishments, Blackwell told me.
This year for example, Florida was supposed to get 100 delegates, but had that cut in half by the GOP for holding an early primary.
It didn't deter the Florida GOP one bit; they had a very competitive primary and even held two GOP debates in the week before the primary vote.
But if there were only nine delegates at stake, would it matter as much?
We won't know until 2016.
