I keep hearing how the new primary schedule is going to change things. A few readers wrote in the other day (or was that yesterday?) when I questioned the utility of national polls to say that now that we are having essentially a national primary all bets are off. I don’t buy it. The new frontloaded primary schedule makes Iowa and New Hampshire more, not less, important. As always, the winner out of the early primaries gets a huge bump in the polls, free media and donations. It doesn’t meant they can’t be stopped — see McCain Vs. South Carolina – but the idea that a candidate can run around Iowa and New Hampshire because of the new schedule isn’t that plausible to me.