Clown car or musical chairs?
by Tom Sullivan
There are only 10 chairs onstage for the first GOP presidential debate on August 6 in Cleveland. The clowns are circling, circling, circling, tripping over their big shoes and eyeing each other, listening for Katie Perry to stop singing “Roar.” Several are going to be left without a chair.
Politico calls the GOP race for 10th place a “Darwinian struggle for survival.” Couldn’t happen to a better bunch of social Darwinists:
Debate host Fox News has decided that only the top 10 contenders, determined by an average of national polls out by Aug. 4, will merit a spot onstage — setting off a Darwinian struggle that has some candidates taking desperate measures to try to move their numbers, and others spinning away their near-certain failure to qualify. Several campaigns also are already spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on TV ads to boost their profiles, even though the Iowa caucuses are six months away.
So who will be left when the music stops?
According to POLITICO’s latest average of national polls, eight candidates are looking like a lock for the debate: Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee and Ben Carson. Perry and Chris Christie are in for now, but only barely. Those still with a chance to make the stage are John Kasich, Rick Santorum and Bobby Jindal. For the other candidates — Carly Fiorina, George Pataki, Lindsey Graham and Jim Gilmore — it will be very difficult to get to Cleveland.
It’s not looking good for Graham:
“I think it sucks,” the South Carolina senator said Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Gentlemen, start your blenders.