Fiorina Campaign: Why are Republicans Letting CNN Pick Our President?
(Desmoines Register) – Why are Republicans letting CNN pick our presidential nominee? Fox I might understand, but CNN?
Confused? Not a surprise. Most in the GOP don’t realize what is happening — except those in the highest level of the establishment in Washington, D.C. Us folks out in the cornfields, well, we’re just going about our regular lives blissfully unaware how the game, I mean nomination process, is being taken away from us.
It used to be that Iowa played a prominent role in selecting the next president. But a lot of folks have been working hard over the years to take that away from us. Too Midwestern, too conservative, too white, too — pick whatever adjective describes an Iowan, like maybe hard-working or thoughtful. Several states have tried to leapfrog us and our friends in New Hampshire, yet we have staved off those attacks. Now the “we can’t let Iowa decide” crowd has a new method. If they can’t leapfrog us, they will decide which candidates we may choose from.
Case in point: The move by the Republican National Committee and the major television networks to decide on their own which candidates we will be able to watch debate in prime time. By ignoring candidates’ standings in Iowa and New Hampshire, they are moving us toward a national primary, thereby negating our role in the nominating process.
Let’s use the upcoming debate put on by the RNC and CNN as an example. CNN is choosing which 10 candidates to put on the debate stage. But they are not considering who are the top 10 polling candidates in Iowa or New Hampshire. Instead they have a strange methodology of using nine national polls that occurred before the Fox debate, and only two national polls that have taken place since the Fox debate. It is not as if only two polls have been taken since the debate in Ohio — there have been multiple and there are weeks to go. But CNN decides which polls to use and they are going to use two.
Imagine if a football, baseball or basketball team won their playoff game, but doesn’t get to advance to the next round because of their preseason performance. That is the CNN methodology.
The result: a candidate that ranks 5th in Iowa in each of three post-Fox polls, and 3rd and 5th in New Hampshire in two post-Fox polls will be excluded from the main debate stage and prime time coverage. From a national perspective the Real Clear Politics polling average puts this candidate in a solid 7th position — well inside the cut line — yet not on the debate stage.
Who is the GOP establishment and CNN conspiring to keep off the stage? Carly Fiorina.
Full disclosure, Carly is my candidate. So if you want to ignore all of the above, that is certainly your prerogative. But beware — I could be easily describing your candidate now or in the future. Candidates toiling away in Iowa, laying the groundwork for a caucus victory, are often ignored by the national press. Rick Santorum is about to complete the ballyhooed “Full Grassley,” Bobby Jindal has spent more time in Iowa than it takes to declare legal residency. Both of them will also be relegated to the “kids’ table” on debate night.
Now you might be thinking, “Rants, that sounds like sour grapes. Your candidate just needs to do better.” If I wrote this before the Fox debate you might be right. But the candidate in question is doing better, exceedingly so. This isn’t about just one candidate. This is about a process where someone who thinks they know better than you, decides whom you will get to choose from.
The Trump phenomenon is a wake-up call to the political establishment in D.C. and the big media. The grass roots are fed up with business as usual. These powers-that-be didn’t see it coming and are unable to comprehend the anger out here. But it’s real and it’s not going away.
Conversely the intentional exclusion by the political and media establishment of Carly Fiorina from the debate stage ought to be a wake-up call to the grass roots. The criteria being used is so illogical one must ask why they have their thumb on the scale. Either there is a desire to ensure someone else is standing behind a podium or there is a desire keep a strong, convincing, conservative woman off the prime-time stage. Either way, CNN is scripting how the GOP is presented to the American people. That ought to make you angry.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/2015/08/29/column-republicans-letting-cnn-pick-president/71390128/
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