Ya think?
Two weeks after the first Republican presidential debate in Cleveland, several candidates scraping the bottom of primary polls are still seething about their treatment — and ripping party leadership for what they describe as, at best careless, and at worst intentional, decisions that embarrassed them on national TV.
The complaints center around what looked to you and me and them like deliberate attempts to sabotage the lower-tier debate.
From contradictory communications about who, if anyone, would be allowed in the arena, which was largely empty during the debate, to a since-deleted tweet by an RNC staffer of Chairman Reince Priebus peering down at the nearly deserted facility, to a decision by the RNC — which held its summer meetings in Cleveland the same week — to hold a rules session and two receptions while the seven candidates were onstage.
Adding to the insult was the energy and enthusiasm that accompanied the prime-time Republican debate later the same night [...]
The RNC claims innocence, and blames any debate problems on Fox News.
This won't be the end of the problems for the second-tier debaters. After the first debate Carly Fiorina was immediately declared the "winner" of the evening, and the resulting press coverage has boosted her poll numbers into what would easily be first-tier status for September's next, CNN-hosted debate. But since the declared CNN measure of relevance collects polls from July 16 to Sept. 10, i.e. from long before that debate performance, it will be nearly impossible for Fiorina to maintain poll numbers so high that they offset her pre-debate, near-zero numbers.
At 1.6 percent, Fiorina would need to average 5 percent, her best performance to date, for 11 straight polls to rise above the two governors, as long as their percentages did not rise as well.
So if any of the second-tier candidates boost themselves out of also-ran status, it will have to be
in spite of the Republican debates, not because of them. And as fellow candidate Rick Perry's money problems can attest, they're running out of time.