Nevada Republicans who want to badmouth New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner should take a long, hard look in the mirror first.

On Saturday, the Nevada Republican Party’s executive committee voted to move its caucuses from Jan. 14 to Feb. 4. In the Nevada media and among that state’s political establishment, the move was depicted as a battle of wills that ended with a capitulation to Gardner. Here is how former Nevada Gov. and current RNC member Bob List portrayed it to the Las Vegas Sun:

“In our judgment it made more sense to go back in to February, be the peacemaker…. and quit quibbling with the juvenile Secretary of State of New Hampshire.”

Well, we suppose that one way to try to save face after a nationally embarrassing blunder is to childishly insult the other guy. But this mess was the Nevada GOP’s fault, not Bill Gardner’s, and everyone involved could see that.

Nevada Republican officials have blamed Florida Republicans for moving up their primary, and they have blamed Bill Gardner for threatening to move New Hampshire’s primary into December. But based on their public comments, some of them are not taking responsibility for knowingly moving their caucus date into conflict with New Hampshire law.

They knew that moving their own date to Jan. 14 would prompt a showdown with New Hampshire, and they knew why: because New Hampshire state law requires that our primary be seven days before any similar contest. They moved anyway. Now who was being juvenile?

There was buzz from Nevada for weeks that Republicans should stick with Jan. 14 because Gardner was bluffing. That must be the way people immersed in a casino culture think. But Gardner was not playing games. He was obeying his own state’s law. That he was right, and Nevada wrong, was obvious from the pressure national Republican Chairman Reince Priebus and GOP officials from other states put on Nevada, not on New Hampshire.

This episode might very well have pushed the nation’s first primary into December, a first. Credit is due to Priebus for helping prevent that, when it was the party establishment (before he became chairman) that created the conditions for this chaos by laying down no serious sanctions for states that violate the RNC’s nominating calendar.

If this mess is to be avoided four years from now, both parties have got to create serious penalties for states that jump the calendar. By law, New Hampshire will always go first. The parties will not change that. But by improving their rules, they can help ensure that we don’t have a Thanksgiving primary a few years from now.