(01-26-2016, 10:25 PM)CKwi88 Wrote: The network debates sure did take a turn towards the evil side one your boy Rand was kicked to the curb.

Quote:Rand Paul poised to make the cut for main debate stage

By Daniel Strauss and Steven Shepard
01/26/16 10:45 AM EST

Sen. Rand Paul is poised to make his return to the main-stage Republican presidential debate on Thursday.
The cutoff for the polls that will be used to decide which candidates qualify for the main stage and which are bumped down to the undercard debate is 5 p.m. Tuesday. The Paul campaign earlier in the day announced a conference call “with political reporters this evening to discuss the 2016 election cycle, Iowa caucus, and upcoming RNC/Fox News debate.”
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Fox News has set the same criteria for qualification as last week’s Fox Business News debate: the top six candidates in national polls, plus any other candidates in the top five in either Iowa or New Hampshire. Those rankings are determined by averages of the five most recent national polls conducted by live telephone interviewers.
According to POLITICO’s calculations, while Paul is outside the top six nationally, the Kentucky senator is currently tied for fifth place in Iowa with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush at an average of 4 percent. Moreover, if another Iowa survey is released prior to Fox’s 5 p.m. deadline, the oldest poll that would drop out of the average is a Loras College poll that has Bush at 6 percent and Paul at 3 percent — making it even easier for Paul stay tied with Bush or leap-frog him.
The rest of the main debate stage is expected to include the seven candidates who also made it last time: Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and John Kasich.
Top Paul officials were optimistic Tuesday morning that he would also make the main-stage debate. “Looking good,” Paul campaign manager Chip Englander told POLITICO. “Our belief is that the next poll to be dropped would actually be Jeb’s best. So the last few polls we were in a bit of a precarious situation because we were losing polls that were good for us. But they were being replaced with polls that were equally good, so that was fine.”
Paul did not participate at all in the last debate after he fell short of qualifying for the main stage. Paul refused to participate in the undercard event, saying he had a “top-tier” campaign that deserved to be only on the main stage.

 CKw Wrote:The network debates sure did take a turn towards the evil side one your boy Rand was kicked to the curb.

(01-26-2016, 09:35 PM)StLucieBengal Wrote: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/01/26/trump-will-definitely-not-participate-in-fox-debate-campaign-says/?tid=sm_tw

No matter how you feel about trump.    This is a good thing that we had candidates pulling away from the networks .  

Would be nice to take away the ratings bump these networks get as a payoff for contributions to the parties.

(01-26-2016, 10:41 PM)Rotobeast Wrote: If Trump bails, Paul is totally back on.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/rand-paul-main-stage-debate-218230

Bent Wrote:disagree.

it leads to an even less informed public. Not everyone, especially the poor, have access to listening to them via the internet or other means.

campaign reforms need to happen. But so do debates easily accessible by the public.

(01-27-2016, 11:46 AM)StLucieBengal Wrote: The poor argument would work if they only had them on basic programming channels.   But having them on premium cable channels doesn't make them anymore accessible to the poor.

Bent Wrote:Valid point, but it's not just the poor.  Way to pick up on "especially the poor" out of the rest of the sentence.



From what I understood, they were showing the debates via antenna channels? I don't know how that works, but that's what I was told by people who watched the debates without cable.

(01-27-2016, 12:05 PM)StLucieBengal Wrote: Well you mentioned uninformed.   Those people are too busy watching hard copy, daily show and the view for their news.    They don't pay attention to the debates anyway.  So I thought it's not relevant to mention them.    They are hopeless.

I watch everything via an online stream so I'm not sure what comes through via antenna.

Bent Wrote:Nobody is hopeless. Case in point, I'm still convinced you can be saved.

bfine Wrote:O'Riely just had Trump on and I think Fox directed O'Riely to do everything in his power to get him back.

They had the upper hand on Trump in this and they gave it away; as did my former fav Ted Cruz.

Not ready to jump on the Trump express yet, but he is dragging a large percentage on both sides around by the nose.

(01-27-2016, 10:30 PM)StLucieBengal Wrote: If you don't mind me asking ... What soured you on Cruz?