On October 17, the Missouri Senate convened and considered many amendments to two bills that would have altered the February 7, 2012 presidential primary. In the end, the Senate defeated all the proposed amendments and didn’t pass any bill on this subject. Frontloading HQ has the details here.

Although the February 7 presidential primary will now be held, it will not choose delegates to the Republican national convention. The Missouri Republican Party will use caucuses in March instead. Retaining the February 7 presidential primary will enable the state’s two ballot-qualified minor parties, the Libertarian Party and the Constitution Party, to have their own presidential primaries. UPDATE: here is a newspaper story on the retention of the primary.