Presidential primaries can't get much earlier

SOMEDAY SOON — The Florida Republican Party announced today that it will hold its presidential primary tomorrow. In response, New Hampshire, announced it was moving its presidential primary, traditionally the first in the nation, to yesterday.

These announcements follow a string of escalations in the Great Presidential Primary Wars that began when Florida announced it would hold its presidential primary in January. Refusing to be relegated to second place in the presidential sweepstakes, New Hampshire promptly moved its primary to December.

But the Christmas Primary was short-lived, when Florida proclaimed its primary day to be the Day after Thanksgiving. Then New Hampshire retaliated by declaring Halloween its primary day, despite a chorus of "how appropriate!" from cynical Democrats. Ultimately, that led to today's twin announcements of the Tomorrow Primary and the Yesterday Primary.

Asked how voters were supposed to arrange to vote tomorrow, much less yesterday, one New Hampshire party spokesman admitted, on condition of anonymity, "It's not the vote we're after. We just want the over-the-top publicity for an event that involves only a minuscule portion of the national electorate."