This has to be an embarrassing picture for Republicans. It is a picture of the "crowd" that showed up to watch the debate of the GOP second-tier candidates -- those who did not make the top ten, and weren't allowed to debate with the leading candidates. And this is not a picture of the crowd gathering before the debate. This picture was taken about 30 minutes into the debate -- meaning that's as large as the audience ever got.
The question is -- was the TV viewing audience as small as the audience attending the debate? There is really no reason to believe it wasn't -- and that shows you how important it was for a GOP candidate to make the big debate (the one the top ten candidates participated in). Nationally televised debates are the opportunity for a candidate to break out of the pack, and convince voters to support them -- but if no one watches the debate you are relegated to, then it becomes very hard to do that.
The candidates relegated to this second-tier debate are Rick Perry, Jim Gilmore, Bobby Jindal, Carly Fiorina, Rick Santorum, Lindsey Graham, and George Pataki. None of them has been able to drum up any real support for their candidacies. It might be time for them to stop wasting their time and money.
I have to admit that I did not watch either of the two debates on Fox News last night. I've always had a very low threshold for bat-crap crazy politicians telling lies, and the older I get the lower that threshold gets. If you are a braver soul than me, and actually watched one or both of the GOP debates, feel free to let me know what you thought of them in the comments section.
This photo is of the second debate -- the one with the top ten candidates in it. It looks like they couldn't get a full house for it either. I'm surprised they didn't pay some homeless people to fill the empty seats.
I watched two small bits from the big debate. I write about them tomorrow morning on my blog (9:05 am). But Ed Kilgore was nice enough to give a good rundown in six live-blog posts over at Washington Monthly. I recommend checking them out. But I didn't like what I saw. Simple demagoguery. But I thought Reed Richardson summed up what is really important:
ReplyDeleteTerms not mentioned tonight at #GOPDebate:
-income inequality
-minimum wage
-climate change
-voting rights
-parental leave
-mass shootings
Was the early debate open to the pubic or are those people just the candidates' families?
ReplyDeleteLooking at Frank's comment, above, I'll note that - at least in the main debate - guns were only mentioned once in passing by Rand Paul. I thought that was unusual, although I suppose all candidates have largely the same position on guns so why bother?
I watched part of the early one and all of the second one. The fireworks looked cheap. Marco Runio, although I personally find him infantile and unconvincing, is the one who might be the worst for Hillary's chances. Young, good-looking, etc. He didn't do much last night but look like a grown-up, but maybe that's all he needed to do.
Obviously, I meant "public."
ReplyDeleteBut this will encourage me to proofread from now on.