"For Iowa, it's pretty clear. We have to stay first, even if it means going to November," Iowa's treasurer, Michael Fitzgerald, told the Des Moines Register.

The South Carolina Republican Party's decision yesterday to move its primary up to Jan. 19 has made figuring out the political calendar more difficult than making sense of the NFL playoffs tie-breaker system.

In the traditional order of things, Iowa goes first, New Hampshire goes second and South Carolina goes third. What's happened this year is that other states have tried to leapfrog into the picture, setting their own primaries for the same date as South Carolina's planned primary.

So that means New Hampshire will likely act to move its primary a week before South Carolina's and that means Iowa must move earlier still. The options are early January, which means mixing campaigning and the Christmas season, or else some time in 2007.

By way of comparison, Iowa held its caucuses in 2004 on Jan. 19 -- the same date South Carolina is now jumping to.

-- Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times