NEW YORK (AFP) — Republican White House hopeful John McCain on Tuesday criticized what he called the overly-compressed timing of the primary process that will select candidates for next year's US presidential election.
With states vying with one another for influence by holding their primaries and caucuses earlier than in the past, next year's primary season will likely see some 20 states voting on February 5 -- dubbed "Super Tuesday."
"We now are going to decide at the latest by the fifth of February who the nominee is. We're not going to have our (Republican Party) convention until September. What's that all about?" McCain told reporters in New York.
"I think it's terribly compressed, I think it's wrong," the Arizona senator added. "It's wrong. It's got to be fixed and it's not healthy for America."
With the November 4 election itself still over a year away, McCain said the timing of the presidential campaigning had got out of hand.
"Dwight David Eisenhower announced that he was running for president in 1952 in June of 1952. Now that's how far we have come," McCain said.
"If I were the nominee of the party, I would sit down with the Democrat nominee and I would say 'look, we've got to fix this.'"
Once the presumed Republican front-runner, McCain downsized his campaign early this year after a fundraising crunch and now lags behind former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Massachusetts ex-governor Mitt Romney in the polls.
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