[FoRK] Is Media playing favorites?

[Luis Villa]

On Jan 7, 2008 2:59 PM, Kevin Elliott <k-elliott at wiu.edu> wrote:
>
> On Jan 7, 2008, at 9:18 AM, Luis Villa wrote:
> > I think Paul is crazy, but he's been polling above 5% in every New
> > Hampshire poll for at least a month, and in the 'last four major new
> > hampshire surveys' he's been at either 10 or 8%. So either those
> > aren't the Republican rules, or they aren't being paid attention to.
>
> Yes.  And so:
>
> "The Republican debate will include Iowa caucus winner Mike Huckabee,
> John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul.
> It starts at 7 p.m. EST."
>
> "The network set rules to narrow the field. Candidates had to meet at
> least one of three criteria: place first through fourth in Iowa, poll
> 5 percent or higher in one of the last four major New Hampshire
> surveys, or poll 5 percent or higher in one of the last four major
> national surveys."
>
> From:
> http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=4089055
>
> Seems to me that ABC is following it's rules, and that those rules
> don't seem to be that crazy.

Ah, didn't realize those were ABC's rules. Paul was not invited to the
Fox debate this weekend, which is what I thought was under discussion.

> >
> > [I'd add that the only even vaguely plausible justification for giving
> > such tiny, unrepresentative states such an important role is that as
> > small states they can examine the candidates more closely than the
> > rest of the country can, so relying on national polls to determine who
> > gets airtime in NH/Iowa is not just stupid but actively contradictory
> > to the whole point of spending any time in those states at all.]
>
> Did you read it?  4th OR 5% OR 5%

I'd say 4th or 5% and would drop the last 5%.

> Seems like an honest attempt to make sure that even _slightly_ viable
> candidate are not eliminated prematurely, even if the happen to be
> particularly unpopular in a particular state.  Personally, I think the
> best argument for our current primary system is that allows candidates
> to build support and show case their ideas with relatively little
> support.  If the primaries started in say CA, the winner would
> probably be the person who could dump vast amounts of cash into the
> state to for advertising.  This it's a least possible, at least in
> theory, to run a grassroots campaign.

I agree.

Luis