The new Ethanol

Looking for a reason to root for Florida's entry into the absurd who-can-hold-the-earliest-primary derby? Here you go.

ORLANDO — If Florida gets its way, hurricane insurance will be the new ethanol in presidential politics. Jealous that Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status for White House balloting always boosts that state’s self-interested obsession with corn-based fuel, Florida’s political elites are uprooting the campaign calendar in large part to put their own pet issue on the national agenda.

Lobbying presidential candidates to back a federal catastrophe insurance fund is at the root of a bipartisan crusade in Florida to make the nation’s fourth-largest state one of the early battlegrounds in the 2008 nomination races of both parties