"Super Tuesdays" warp the entire process. When you shove everything up front, one bad day will kill a campaign. Money becomes more volatile -- big donors want to back "the winner," however poor a candidate he may be; rather than wasting their money on a loser who may nevertheless be the best person for the general election.
The accelerated primary season also means that there's no such thing as real debate in these campaigns anymore. The "debates" are incredibly stupid, because the candidates' strategies are necessarily geared toward killer soundbites.
There's simply no time for a good candidate to develop and emerge over a period of 3-4 months, with : it's all over by February.
What the Republican Party leadership really needs to do, is to begin a serious process of recruiting a few really serious candidates -- and the sooner the better. I'm talking about a return to old real "smoky back room" stuff that the primaries were designed to do away with.
The Party has a responsibility to ensure that its candidates are viable -- which means, in part, that they're acceptable across a broad-enough range of the party that the candidates themselves can settle down to real issues.
The primaries would still sort these guys out, of course -- supposing that they can be spread out more evenly between March and June, with big states coming later. To HELL with that idiocy of letting Iowa and New Hampshire decide who's viable and who's not.
Another needed reform has to do with the assigning of delegates. The "winner take all" approach is also a disaster. The Republicans have got to come up with a way so that good candidates still have a chance after a mediocre primary.
What I favor is a system (closed), but would stipulate:
The states which voted most heavily in favor of our Republican Presidential candidate in the last election get to VOTE 1st, 2nd.. in the Presidential Primaries next go round.. The states which voted least % Republican in the General Election last time get to vote LAST next go round in Republican Primaries. (That way there is a reward for voting Republican), and we then know that heavily Democratic States will ~NOT~ be determining OUR Candidate (Hence probably a more conservative nominee~)!
To me, that is the real problem, not so much the “Super Tuesday" and the quashing of the primaries together. After all, the Dems had Super Tuesday too, yet the fight for the Dems nomination went right on to the bitter end. We've got to do away with winner takes all, otherwise our primaries are could keep churning out idiots like Juan McCain.