[FoRK] Is Media playing favorites?

[Kevin Elliott]

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.

>
> [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%

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.