After a somewhat lackluster debate in Cleveland, the GOP's clown parade moves on down the road. The next stop is the Reagan Library in California, where CNN will host the second Republican debate on September 16th.
CNN has announced that they will follow the lead of Fox News, and divide the candidates into two groups -- a top tier of 10 candidates who will participate in the main debate, and a second tier of candidates who will participate in a second debate. There is one difference though. CNN is requiring the candidates to have at least 1% in the polls to participate. That means Jim Gilmore, who has been unable to reach that very low bar, may not get to participate even in the second-tier debate.
It is likely that Carly Fiorina, who was voted best clown in the first debates, will join nine others in the first-tier debate this time. That brings up the question -- who will be relegated to the kiddie table to make room for Fiorina at the adults table? I'm guessing it will be Christie that will be demoted -- but it could be Huckabee or Paul, both of whom have been doing poorly in recent national polls.
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CNN will also host the first Democratic candidate debate in Nevada on October 13th. That debate will probably include all five declared candidates (Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Martin O'Malley, Jim Webb, and Lincoln Chafee) -- and even Joe Biden, if he loses his mind and jumps into the race before than.
In addition to that CNN debate, the Democrats will have five more debates, to be hosted by:
I would love to see Christie go down to the minors. But I'm curious as to why you think it's going to be him.
ReplyDeleteIt's just a guess. But I see Paul as having a fairly loyal band of Libertarians backing him, and Huckabee is the same to a hardcore group of evangelicals. Both groups are small, but may just be large enough to keep them in the top ten. Christie has no such natural group of supporters, and he's been sinking fast. I don't think he could even carry his home state of New Jersey in a GOP primary.
ReplyDeleteI tend to agree with you about Rand Paul. In fact, I'm somewhat surprised that he has fallen, because I thought he would always have 7-8% support. But he's the only one I have any real clue about. To be honest, I don't see any difference between Cruz and Huckabee. I certainly did in 2008, when I was actually kind of scared of him. (Not that I knew who Cruz was at that time.) He was so damned likable. But now: just kind of like Cruz. And maybe that means he will lose out, because the Republicans seemed to like what they saw in Cruz during the debate. But with Christie, they might like him, but he doesn't stand out enough for them to move toward him. And you are right: whatever constituency that he might have is on board with Trump. It's the loudmouth New Jersey vote. And there can be only one!
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