All Republican candidates for president will get a chance to debate next week on the Fox News Channel.
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One week from Thursday, everyone will be looking to Cleveland when the first Republican presidential debate takes place at the Q. The New Jersey governor vented some of his frustration at the polls earlier this month, when a Monmouth University poll placed him in a tie for ninth place with just 2 percent support.
At this point more than 450 members of the news media have requested credentials for the first presidential face-to-face of the 2016 campaign. The rest will be banished to a second-tier debate held at 5 p.m., when viewership is much smaller.
Chris Christie’s “telling it like it is” brand is struggling to compete with the loud, headline-grabbing comments of Donald Trump. With none of the inhibitions of the traditional politician, he is both willing to say outlandish things and then embrace them rather than walk them back as others would. The network has said that the polls “must be conducted by major, nationally recognized organizations that use standard methodological techniques” – likely meaning polls conducted using live interviewers, calling both land lines and cellphones, conducted by media outlets or academic institutions with experience in national election polling.
Fox and Facebook are teaming on that primetime debate for the top 10 polling candidates, but Fox is also providing an “undercard” debate – preceding the main event – featuring the balance of the candidates.
Although the event is advertised as a two-hour debate, the large number of candidates ensures that it will feel more like 10 simultaneous news conferences.
The change amounts to an insurance policy for candidates who were in danger of being disqualified from the vital first debate based on low polls – Carly Fiorina, former New York Gov. George Pataki and Sen. Who knew that by selecting only the top-polling candidates on a certain date Fox would encourage the kind of outrageous and in some cases damaging behavior we have seen?
Contrary to conventional wisdom, however, I’m thinking that maybe the “kids’ table” debate might prove to be the more interesting of the two. Big names and accomplished politicians like Lindsay Graham, Rick Santorum and Bobby Jindal all run that risk.
For all the agonizing, the debate’s importance can easily be overstated.
Carr, host of the “Howie Carr Show”, is broadcasted on at least seven New Hampshire stations and is also aired on roughly 25 stations across the northeast, so he has a wide range of listeners who have weighed in on the debate requirements.
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Trump’s early lead has surely turned debate prep on its head for many candidates. Appearing to disavow any last-minute move to oust Trump and make room for more experienced candidates, he added: “No special exemptions can be made; special treatment cannot be given to certain candidates”.
