An interesting fact about Florida -- it's illegal for gays to marry or adopt children, yet perfectly legal to have sex with a goat. But enough about the legislature. Today is about testing the delusions of a narrowing field of presidential candidates.

The polls on the Republican side have John McCain and Mitt Romney running neck and neck in the low 30s, with Rudy Giuliani jostling with Mike Huckabee for saddest candidate deflation, and Ron Paul expected to bob around on the fringe per usual.

The Democrats are expected to repeat the wide margins found in South Carolina, except this time with Hillary Clinton on top in the mid to high 40s, Barack Obama trailing with around 25 to 30 percent, and John Edwards coming in around 12 to 15 percent.

What's unknown this morning is whether the Kennedy endorsement bump will help Obama, and whether Clinton's side-stepping of the no-campaigning in Florida pledge will overcome that. More clear is that voter interest is very high.

The last two election cycles, there was about a 20 percent turnout of the state's 10 million voters in the primaries. This cycle, more than 10 percent had already cast a vote before election day, indicating turnout could be as surprising here as it was in South Carolina.

I called up a Republican observer of the Florida fray for some perspective. Michael Caputo has consulted for many campaigns including those of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Jack Kemp. He is currently working to derail a Hometown Democracy referendum in Florida that would place local land use regulations squarely in the hands of voters, a prospect that chills the blood of the development and real estate industries.

Caputo hasn't thrown in with any particular candidate as yet, although he personally prefers McCain. He says what's interesting about Florida is that it is shaping up, more than any other early primary state, as a battleground between the conservative and neo-conservative Republicans.

"In Florida, you'll see the first real separation of the Reagan crowd versus the Bush crowd since 1980," he argues. "They are starting to throw rocks at each other. Old arguments are being reheated at hotel bars all across Florida."

The weird thing he's noticed is that many of the people involved with the Reagan campaigns 25 and 30 years ago have now flooded into Florida to back McCain. Meanwhile, the old rift between the Reagan and Bush I wings of the party (which he terms the Reaganites and the Rockefeller Republicans) has been resurrected through the Bushies' support of Mitt Romney.

This is a little convoluted, but here goes: According to Caputo, back in 1980, the Reagan and Bush crowds (which, it's well-documented, did not care for each other) made peace in order to win the White House. That done, the Reaganites continued to support the Bush presidencies because they saw them as a continuation of the conservative legacy.

But, once the Bush II presidency became such as disaster, the Reaganites rebelled. "A lot of us felt like this was a marriage of convenience," Caputo says. "Now these folks are feeling it's high time to get divorced."