At the moment, days before the GOP primary, it feels as though Floridians are bystanders at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade of Politics.

On Monday night, there was that wide, dramatic TV camera shot leading to the sleek auditorium on the campus of the University of South Florida in Tampa where Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich fought over Romney’s taxes and Gingrich’s lobbying and who generally is a fraud.

Unlike the parade, it was the same old stuff, except that Newt is scaring even more people now.

On Tuesday, in his State of the Union address, President Obama took to the House of Representatives to demand of the Republicans what he didn’t bother to demand until he realized his re-election depends on it.

In an act amazing for its timing, the First Lady magically popped up in Tampa on Thursday, touting good nutrition for Hispanics, that most critical Florida voting bloc.

Then, Thursday night, Romney and Gingrich duked it out again, metaphorically speaking, in a second debate at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. How many debates does that make since Iowa? Have you lost count, too?

This is not cynicism talking: these consultant-shaped, canned-and-ready talking points lose their ability to impress after a voter has heard them a thousand times.

Politics is never without irony. The most important words you’ll hear this week are not from people who want your vote, but from people concerned about how hard it may be for you to vote.

On Friday in Tampa, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, was holding the first of a series of field hearings on the legal changes that Florida, like so many states, has made in the voting process.

The number of days of early voting has been cut. Voters can’t change their addresses at the polls on Election Day and still vote like everyone else. Rules and fines threatened in connection with voter registration have become so tough that the legendary League of Women Voters has given up the business of signing up new voters.

It is surely not coincidental that Durbin’s hearings, sought by Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, another Democrat, are being held in the middle of the primary parade. Even a noble cause can have less than entirely noble motivations. But who would have thought the LWV would be a threat to the democratic process?

Make that the Republican process.

Critics have said for months that the real goal of these changes is not to clamp down on voter fraud, but voters, period. Students and the poor change addresses often. Voter registration efforts often are directed at people on the margins, and people at the margins tend to vote Democratic. Early voting can just boost turnout, period. Heaven forbid.

Funny how it goes: some of the people who say they want you to watch the parade in January would prefer you stay home in November.

Mary Jo Melone, former columnist with the St. Petersburg Times, is a writer in Tampa.