I knew that the first debate would draw an audience but when I saw te numbers this afternoon that the first GOP debate got 24 million eyeballs, I was shocked
That means that the debate reached the equivalent of 10% of the entire
American adult population in the dead of summer when television networks go on hiatus since nobody watches anything.
I also the following stat
Gabriel Debenedetti of Politico noted that more people watched the prime time debate "than voted over the course of the entire 2012 GOP primary (18.9 million)."
Now obviously this wasn't just an example of 24 million republicans tuning in to learn more about their favorite candidate but rather an example of the appeal to one Donald J. Trump. Four years ago this first debate got 3.6 million viewers and probably had a lot of the same characters, so Trump alone is worth 20 million viewers which coincidentally is the number of viewers the Apprentice used to get.
The thing is that although Trump got the most airtime, most attention, most coverage and the most difficult questions, his competitors had to be happy because had it not been for Trump we would have no idea who a few of them are (Carson, Kasich) and a few of them would have been out of this race before Labor Day as nobody would have cared (Christie, Huckabee). And a couple of them would have remained total fringe candidates that nobody in their right mind would have voted for anyway (Rand Paul, Ted Cruz) so for all of those guys this debate was great because it gave them airtime even limited and gave us a chance to find out a little bit about them.
It wasn't as good for the top three legitimate candidates
Jeb looked nervous, uninspired and it felt like old mama Bush was forcing him to do this thing like a kid who has to do a piano recital
Walker was pasty and boring and no president should have a bald spot that big
Rubio made you wish he was reaching for a Poland Spring bottle with how awkward he was and his ears look like he only needed a feather to fly away
The only one that made me think was the guy I couldn't have picked out of a lineup..Kasich. That dude was a breath of fresh air as the only guy not pandering to the hard religious right. He went from first guy off the island to legitimate contender..at least in this political pundits eyes
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I knew who Ben Carson was over 20 years ago. That is because back when I was a college freshman, my then-girlfriend, who was raised in a very Christian family, made me read Ben Carson's stupid, fundamentalist Christian book.
ReplyDeleteStill, I thought that because he was a black guy, he would have been a Democrat. Oh, well. Religion trumps race, apparently, at least for morons.