Florida moving up primary into the window

This is quite interesting… Apparently, the Florida state legislature is moving up the primary, again, to January 29th.

This would be the same day as South Carolina, I believe. I see several implications:

1. I believe that the Democrats will penalize Florida for this by either stripping their delegates or stripping a large number of them. Perhaps one of my Dem readers can check on this?
2. I cannot imagine that this is not at the wishes of Mitt Romney’s campaign. Do they think that this will help them? The idea here is, almost certainly, to get momentum out of Florida for Tsunami Tuesday on Feb 5th. Again, Zell Miller did something similar with Georgia to help Bill Clinton in 1992.

Update: More on party consequences:

But there are potential obstacles to Florida’s primary power play.

Aside from a few exceptions such as Iowa and New Hampshire, states that hold primaries to select delegates before Feb. 5 lose half their allotment of delegates to the national nominating convention. And Democratic Party rules say candidates can be penalized for campaigning in a state that picks its delegates before Feb. 5 — by being forced to forfeit the delegates won in that state.

"States can move wherever they want, but there are automatic sanctions," Democratic National Committee spokesman Luis Miranda said. "We will enforce the rules."

The GOP had a similar response.

"It’s up to the state of Florida to determine when it will hold its primary. However, all states will be penalized delegates if they decide to hold their primary outside of the window designated by the RNC," said Amber Wilkerson of the Republican National Committee.