By Greg Giroux, CQ Staff

A rule-making panel of the Republican National Committee (RNC) has approved a plan that would dramatically restructure the presidential nomination process.

But it still has to surmount major obstacles to replace the current front-loaded schedule of primaries and caucuses.

The so-called “Ohio Plan,” which was proposed by state GOP chairman Bob Bennett, seeks to create a more orderly and drawn-out presidential nomination process that involves more voters, discourages advertising-heavy campaigns in big states, and promotes one-on-one retail campaigning in which candidates personally interact with voters.

It would place nearly all of the states and territories into four “pods” with roughly equal populations and electoral vote allocations.

The 14 smallest states and six U.S. territories “pod” would always vote first, but no earlier than the third week of February in presidential election years. The other three pods — comprising nine, 16 and seven states — would rotate their voting positions every four years. The ordering of the pods for the 2012 election would be determined by lottery; the pod that voted before the other two rotating pods would move to the end of the line in 2016 and the other two pods would move up one position. A rotating system would enable each grouping of states to have a chance to wield substantial clout in the presidential selection process.

“Every 12 years, each of these pods can have a major influence on the election,” Bennett told CQ Politics on Thursday.

Bennett’s proposal would allow Iowa to hold its caucuses and New Hampshire to hold its primary before all four pods; it also would extend that special exemption to Nevada and South Carolina, which the Democratic National Committee (DNC) included for the 2008 campaign to lend greater geographic and racial diversity to the early-voting period. Iowa and New Hampshire, which traditionally vote first, would be permitted to vote during the first week of February, while Nevada and South Carolina could vote anytime after New Hampshire.

States could choose to hold primaries or caucuses after their assigned dates — but not before.

Bennett’s plan is a sharp departure from the 2008 nomination calendar, under which more than 20 states scheduled their primaries and caucuses on Feb. 5 — the earliest date allowed under national party rules and nine months before the general election — in hopes of exerting outsized influence in the White House race.

Arizona Sen. John McCain emerged as the prohibitive GOP favorite after the big Republican balloting on Feb. 5. On the Democratic side, the “Super Tuesday” voting produced a split verdict between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama , who are still battling in a contest that Obama is leading narrowly.

“We had a de facto national primary on February 5th,” Bennett said. “In surveying additional states that might be moving their primaries, including Ohio, there was a general feeling that we would have a national primary in 2012 if we didn’t do something about it this year.”

The Ohio Plan shares some characteristics with a presidential primary overhaul plan that the Republican Party came close to enacting eight years ago, when (as now) there was no incumbent president seeking re-election. In 2000, Republicans officials gave serious consideration to a plan that also organized the states and territories into pods, with the pod comprising the smallest states always voting first and the pod comprising the most populous states always voting last.

That proposal, which was known as the “Delaware Plan” because it was promoted by GOP officials from that small state, received preliminary approval by the RNC but was rejected by a party rule-making panel shortly before the 2000 national convention convened in Philadelphia. Senior aides to GOP nominee George W. Bush nixed the Delaware Plan because they feared that a fight on the convention floor — waged by larger states that were opposed to the proposal — would disrupt the convention’s clockwork planning and promotion of Bush.