The early presidential caucus and primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina will be the center of the Republican Party’s world next month, but Indiana’s May 8 primary could prove more important.

Republican Party rule changes, penalties for early primary states, and candidates with enough money and supporters to remain in the race may all combine to give Indiana Republicans a taste of the campaign fun Democrats enjoyed in 2008.

Gov. Mitch Daniels is among the Hoosier Republicans rooting for a drawn-out nominating process.

"One can conjure a scenario … that might lead to a situation that’s still in play when May gets here, and that’d be terrific," Daniels said. "I thought it was so great when it mattered on the Democratic side last time."

Republicans changed their rules for awarding convention delegates last year hoping to capture the excitement Democrats had as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton battled for months to win the nomination in 2008.

As a result, most early primary states in 2012 will award convention delegates proportionately, based on a candidate’s share of the state’s primary vote, instead of winner-take-all.

In addition, five states that moved their primaries to before March 1 were penalized by the GOP and lost half their delegates.

That means the minimum 1,142 delegates needed for nomination won’t be selected until March 24 and no candidate is likely to win every one of them, putting later primary states with a lot of delegates, such as Indiana’s 46, in play.

Jesse Benton, campaign manager for Ron Paul, said the Texas congressman will strategically compete for delegates throughout the primary process.

"Our campaign has a comprehensive plan to win the delegates needed to either secure the nomination or enter into a brokered convention in Tampa," Benton told POLITICO.

The last time a Republican convention opened without the front-runner in control of enough delegates to win the nomination was 1976 when Ronald Reagan tried to wrest the GOP nomination from President Gerald Ford. Ford lost in the general election that year to Jimmy Carter.

Daniels, who briefly considered running for president earlier this year, believes a brokered convention might not be all bad, even though intra-party fights tend to turn off undecided general election voters.

"At a time when the country is facing just terribly consequential issues, if it led to a good healthy debate about not merely personalities but about what kind of program of change to bring to America, I could convince myself it’s not the worst outcome," Daniels said.

The term-limited governor said he won’t be throwing his hat in the ring at a brokered convention, but he’d enjoy watching it.

"I’ve always said the greatest spectator sport, forget the Super Bowl, if either party ever had a truly deliberative convention in the mini-camera world, it would be spectacular," Daniels said.

Not all Republicans believe the nomination will be up in the air when their convention begins Aug. 27.

Schererville Republican Dan Dumezich, who is leading Mitt Romney’s Indiana campaign, is confident the former Massachusetts governor will have the nomination locked up.

"I think we’re going to have an answer a lot sooner than most people think," Dumezich said. "I’m hoping we have one by January 31."

Governor Jerry Brown has made his state the ninth (I honestly don’t know who the other eight are other than a reference to all being "solidly blue") to strive to change the way the president of the United States is elected. The group, now representing 132 electoral votes, wants to award those electoral votes to the candidate who earns the most votes at the ballot box nationwide.

A couple of law professors have spearheaded the initiative, which apparently has been around for nearly a decade. There is some credence to the fact that a small number of swing states seemingly hold a level of power far exceeding what would be expected. You can put Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and a few others (Iowa and New Hampshire at this time of the year) in that mix.

But maybe it’s just the biggest of the big — California, New York, Texas, etc. — complaining because they get little attention during the campaigns. And then there is the Indiana scenario, relatively forgotten based on its late primary date and consistent GOP backing until the spotlight shined brightly in both the spring and fall of 2008.

Does this measure give every state a real voice, as the supporters say? Check out the full story and let us know what you think.

Twenty percent (20%) of Indiana voters today identify themselves as “independent,” even after factoring out those who self-identify as leaning to one party or the other. This is a 150% increase in true independent voters in just the last six years.

Indiana has whip-sawed in recent elections, delivering the state to President Obama in 2008 in the same year it voted by historic margins for Mitch Daniels. Then in 2010, the state led the nation in a surge for the GOP. What will Indiana independents do in 2012?

These are just some of the findings from a recent statewide poll commissioned by the Indiana Chamber’s political action program, Indiana Business for Responsive Government (IBRG).

A former radio personality, the 51-year-old Mr. Pence became a darling among fiscal conservatives for opposing two of President George W. Bush’s signature initiatives, the 2001 No Child Left Behind education act and the 2003 Medicare Part D drug benefit. He saw both as violating his party’s small-government principles.

Mr. Pence favors reducing the size of the federal government, and even the power of the presidency. He wants to amend the Constitution both to ban abortions and to allow marriage only between men and women. He says increased security along the Mexican border must precede any immigration overhaul.

Mr. Pence was also among the first congressmen to jump on the tea-party wave in early 2009, speaking at rallies across Indiana and in Washington.

It was his speech at the Values Voter Summit, a marquee annual event among social conservative groups, which did the most to rouse support. The speech, with its calls to ban all federal abortion funding and stem-cell research, drew standing ovations and chants of "President Pence."

When summit attendees cast ballots in a straw poll for president, Mr. Pence came in first, ahead of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and others.

For many conservatives, Mr. Pence holds much the same allure that Mr. Huckabee did in the 2008 campaign. Mr. Huckabee tapped into support from home-schoolers and evangelicals to pull off a surprise win in the Iowa caucus, though could never catch Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), the eventual nominee.

"The big question with Huckabee is whether he can raise enough money to be a real contender in 2012," says Tom Minnery, head of public policy for Focus on the Family. As a fresher face, he says, Mr. Pence "is someone who could generate a lot of enthusiasm" in Iowa and other early nominating states and possibly show more durability in the long presidential campaign.

The Indiana lawmaker, who first won election to Congress in 2000, also has the backing of budget hawks such as Chris Chocola, a former Indiana congressman who is now president of the fiscally conservative Club for Growth. "Mike has the retail appeal of Huckabee but is an across-the-board conservative with all the credentials. There is no one else like that," says Mr. Chocola.

Feeding speculation about his presidential ambitions, Mr. Pence has visited Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina in the past year, all states with early roles in the nominating process. And yet Mr. Pence and others in his camp continue to drop hints that he’s shying from a White House run. The thought of a presidential campaign, Mr. Pence said in an interview, "is more humbling than tempting."He says he’s weary of Washington. "I prefer the Flat Rock River to the Potomac River, and the Flat Rock is about a half a block from my house," he said.

The Indiana Chamber and its partners have repeatedly pointed out over the last six-plus years that township government needs to go — for a variety of reasons. Check some of them out at MySmartGov. Now, election reform advocates are saying Tuesday votes are a relic and at least one of the reasons the U.S. ranks a staggering 140th globally in voter participation.

Here’s part of a recent Governing article on making the switch to Saturday elections. It, combined with vote centers, might make sense. Thoughts?

“Voting on Tuesday is the No. 1 remaining burden to voter participation,” says Jacob Soboroff, executive director of Why Tuesday?, a national nonpartisan group that advocates weekend voting. “Moving Election Day to the weekend is the single biggest thing we can do in our country to get more people involved in the political process.”

When Congress was trying to establish a national Election Day in 1845, the biggest concern was accommodating an agrarian society. Farmers needed a day to travel to the county seat, a day to vote and a day to return home. Ruling out days of worship left Tuesday and Wednesday, but Wednesday was typically market day. So, Tuesday it was.

Few Americans still rely on a horse and buggy to get to the voting booth. In today’s urban society, reform advocates say, Tuesday voting is more a hassle than a convenience. In recent years, expanded early voting periods and no-excuse-needed absentee voting in many states have made it easier to cast a ballot without missing work. But what’s really needed, these reformers argue, is a full-out shift to Saturday voting.

Voters in one jurisdiction will get to experiment with weekend voting next year. Last month, San Francisco residents overwhelmingly approved a measure to open polls for the November 2011 election on Tuesday and the previous Saturday. “We’re trying to engage more people in the democratic process,” says Alex Tourk, a local political affairs consultant who spearheaded the effort. “It’s not rocket science to hold an election on a day when most people aren’t working.”

Still, there are complications. Since the San Francisco pilot project essentially establishes two full election days, there’s an added cost to the city. Tourk must cover those expenditures by raising funds from private sources — but establishing what those costs are will be tricky.

Saturday voting won’t be the norm anytime soon. But San Francisco’s experiment could provide some interesting insights into what happens when people don’t have to choose between voting and putting in a full day at the office. Weekend voting may ultimately not change anything, but given America’s bottom-of-the-barrel turnout rates, it sure can’t hurt. 

One of the biggest complaints heard about the election was the overabundance of negative political campaigns. Instead of hearing about what the candidate was actually going to do while in office, most just slammed their opponents – in print, television on the radio. After a while, you start to relate the candidates’ tactics to those you might see in a high school campaign for class president, except these political campaigns are for the men and women that will be deciding things like how much we’re going to pay in taxes. Yikes.

This growing trend of incivility in politics has not gone unnoticed. In fact, a study of this trend was recently released by the Center for Political Participation at Allegheny College, co-authored by Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW) Associate Professor of Political Science Michael R. Wolf.

The most recent phase of the study, which was conducted during the last four days before the November election, shows that Americans are calling the atmosphere “increasingly nasty” and potentially harmful for continued democracy in our country. But, the study says, the good news is that a large majority see the potential for passionate and respectful campaigning in the future.

A little less than half (46%) of the registered voters who were surveyed said that the 2010 election was “the most negative” they’d ever seen and 63% of responders said politics had become less civil since President Barack Obama took office – though the responders blamed different sources. Whatever the cause, 64% of study responders said the current tone of politics is unhealthy for our democracy, with 17% saying the tone is healthy and 14% saying it has little impact.

While these numbers indicate the harmful effects of negative campaigning, it turns out that nine out of 10 registered voters are actually optimistic that candidates can conduct aggressive, but respectful, campaigns.

It seems we will just have to wait until the next election rolls around to find out if the candidates themselves are optimistic that respectful campaigning works. Here’s hoping they figure it out, so I can relax next time I flip on the tube.

Bayh’s decision ends, at least for now, an era in Indiana politics. The son of former U.S. Sen. Birch Bayh, he burst onto the political scene in 1986 when at age 30 he won election as secretary of state before sweeping to victory as governor two years later.

Democrats had hoped he’d resurrect them in 2012, as he did in the 1980s, by running for governor. And, while Bayh had turned his back on a third term in the Senate earlier this year, saying he did “not love Congress,” Democrats were optimistic that a chance to return to a job he had clearly relished would prove irresistible.

“If all I cared about is politics I’d run for governor because I loved being governor, and the prospects were probably favorable” that he’d be elected, Bayh said.

But, he added, “I want my kids to know that they were their parents’ top priority, and more important than ambition. I’ve been privileged to be elected five times. You only have your kids once.”

He said he doesn’t know yet what his next chapter will bring when he ceases to be an elected official Jan. 5, when the man who replaces him, Republican Dan Coats, is sworn in to office.

In the article, state Democrats express disappointment as it likely means they’ll have a very difficult time taking back the office. One also wonders how this will impact Rep. Mike Pence’s gubernatorial considerations.

9. Mike Pence: Pence’s decision to step aside as the fourth ranking Republican in the House makes clear that he has his eye on a bigger prize. His allies cast him as the only candidate in the field who can unite social and fiscal conservatives and, in the early cattle calls, Pence has performed well. Still, as a House member, he has to overcome a perceived stature gap as well as show he can raise the money to be competitive.

7. Mitch Daniels: The Indiana governor is term limited out of office in 2012 and, despite saying he would never run for another job, certainly seems to be weighing a presidential bid. Daniels ran and won as an outsider in Indiana and had built a record over the past six years in office that makes fiscal conservatives smile. Daniels’ problem? He doesn’t have much interest in the cultural wars that are so important to social conservatives. Can someone focused almost exclusively on fiscal issues win a Republican primary for president?

And this is a stretch, but … on the other side, this op-ed was published in The Washington Post Sunday, arguing that Obama would benefit his party, himself, and the country most by not seeking re-election. Doubtful, but it’s an interesting argument. Should he heed this advice, one wonders if it may open the door for a more centrist Democratic candidate in 2012 – perhaps a certain former governor/soon-to-be former senator. Time will tell.

After deciding, Bayh said, he will announce quickly, avoiding his acknowledged mistake in not announcing his Senate decision back in August of ’09, when he told Obama.
    
When Obama asked if he was 100 percent certain, Bayh related, “I made a mistake. I said it’s 98 percent.”
    
Thus, the president and Rahm Emanuel, then White House chief of staff, kept urging him to put off any announcement and reconsider. He put it off, “procrastinating, going back and forth,” until the filing deadline was upon him.
     
Now, some Democrats are angry with Bayh for waiting until it was too late for another candidate to get on the primary ballot. Congressman Brad Ellsworth finally was picked as the nominee by the Democratic State Committee. Ellsworth, who would have won for re-election for his 8th District House seat, was instead trounced Tuesday in a statewide race with Republican Dan Coats. And Democrats lost the 8th District seat.
    
Democratic chances for the Senate wouldn’t have brightened if he had announced much earlier that he wasn’t running, Bayh theorized, because it would have brought a divisive Democratic primary and “Republicans would have had a stronger nominee” than Coats.
    
Bayh noted that I have written he would have won re-election. He said he probably could have, but he would have had to concentrate from May to November on “destroying my opponent” and suffer “personally unpleasant” attacks from the opponent, not very satisfying for someone sick of partisan warfare in the Senate.
    
It’s not his father’s Senate.
   
He said that when his father, Birch Bayh, was in the Senate, “some of his better friends were Republicans. They’d come over for dinner.”
    
He recalled how Sen. Everett Dirksen, then Senate Republican leader,  “came up to him (Birch Bayh) on the floor of the Senate and asked what he could do to help with his re-election. That would never happen today.”
    
Bayh said he is “independent, moderate” and found fewer and fewer on either side of the aisle who would abandon partisan bickering to seek reasonable compromise.
    
“Some of this was unavoidable,” Bayh said of Democratic losses.
    
After financial panic and severe recession, slow recovery was certain, Bayh said, but the slowness was blamed on the president and Democratic-controlled Congress.
    
Usual mid-term election losses for the president’s party were made worse, he said, by Democrats who pressed to do too much on health care reform “in the teeth of the worst economy” and brought on “resurrection of the ‘big taxer, big spender’ image.”

Rep. Kreg Battles eeked out a 166 vote win (50.4%-49.6%) over Ken Beckerman (R) in House 64. In the open House 75 seat, Bob Deig (D) stepped past Wendy McNamara (R) by just 30 votes.

UPDATE: McNamara is now ahead of Deig with a strong chance to take the seat. They’re awaiting the results of provisional ballots and then a possible recount, but it is looking like the GOP may end up with a 60-40 majority after all is said and done.