Making it even harder for possible GOP late-entrants (i.e. Chris Christie, Sarah Palin and, why not, Rudy Giuliani), South Carolina has become the latest state to move up its primary date in a bid to have Iowa-like influence on the race. The Palmetto state will officially be winnowing through the field of Republican contenders on January 21, CNN's Peter Hamby reported on Monday. The move arrives only days after the long-expected official decision by Florida to reshuffle the primary calendar by pushing up its voting day to January 31. But South Carolina's GOP Chairman Chad Connelly sounds just as confident as Florida's officials when informing Hamby about the decision: "South Carolina Republicans have a thirty year track record of picking the eventual Republican Presidential nominee. We will continue that historic tradition on January 21, 2012."

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Erik Hayden