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News/Google/RPOF Republican Presidential Debate
Primary Debates and Forums
Sponsors: FOX News and Google in conjunction with the Republican Party of Florida.
Candidates: Rep. Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, former Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Gov. Jon Huntsman, former Gov. Gary Johson, Rep. Ron Paul, Gov. Rick Perry, former Gov. Mitt Romney, and former Sen. Rick Santorum.
Moderator: Special Report anchor Bret Baier. Panelists Chris Wallace, host of FOX News Sunday and Megyn Kelly, anchor of America Live.
Audience:
Over
5,000
people
including
about
3,500
Presidency
5
delegates.
Broadcast: FOX News Channel (FNC) and live-streamed on YouTube.com/FOXNews, in addition to FOX News Radio, FOX News Mobile, and FOXNews.com.
Format:
"the
debate
will
incorporate
video
and
text
questions
submitted
by
the
public
on
YouTube.com/FOXNews.
Viewers
will
be
able
to
vote
on the
questions they want the candidates to answer, and FOX News will use the
votes to help choose which questions are posed to the
candidates."
According to the debate website, "FOX News and Google received almost
19,000 questions for the Republican
presidential candidates from around the world on different
topics. More
than 100,000 votes came in, which helped to determine which questions
were posed to the candidates during the debate." Candidates had
one minute for answers and 30 seconds for follow ups. There was a
(new) bell sound to signal time.
Overview:
This
debate
was
part
of
the
RPOF's
Presidency
5
activities
and
came
less
than
two
weeks
after
the
CNN/Tea
Party Express debate in
Tampa.
It played a significant role in the surprising outcome of the
Presidency 5 straw poll a day and half later.
Pre-debate conventional
wisdom had a two-man race between Gov. Rick Perry, the designated
frontrunner, and former Gov.
Mitt Romney, something of the establishment
favorite; the rest of the field were striving to break through.
The major story
line going into the debate was how Perry would fare after
enduring attacks from many of the other candidates in the previous
debate. In particular, Romney continued to press Perry on Social
Security in the lead up
to this debate.
Perry's performance in this debate,
particularly his responses to a couple of
questions, did not help him. His position on
in-state tuition for children of illegal immigrants was subject of
considerable corridor discussion among delegates at Presidency 5.
A Romney campaign spokesman described Perry's response to a question
about nuclear weapons in Pakistan falling into the wrong hands as
"incoherent." One P5 delegate who attended the debate said that
before the debate among the people seated around him there was a strong
sense or feeling
towards Perry, but afterwards it was "like somebody punched a hole
in the balloon."
After being excluded from the last four debates, former Gov. Gary Johnson finally made the cut, resulting in nine candidates on stage. Johnson had the least speaking time of any of the candidates, but he did get off the one-liner of the evening: “My next-door neighbor’s two dogs have created more shovel-ready jobs than this current administration.” (Johnson says he came up with the line, although an aide tweeted under his name, "Re: the dogs, I understand Rush Limbaugh made the same point. Credit to Rush for a great and very true line.") In any event, the line had an effect; the next day Johnson would claim to be "the most googled name on the planet."
Notes
1. Submit and vote on questions: YouTube.com/FOXNews.
See also: Google
Public
Sector
and
Elections
Lab.
2. FOX and the RPOF had a bit of a disagreement over Johnson's
inclusion. RPOF spokesman Brian Hughes explained:
"On the criteria issue, the
Republican Party of Florida and FOX agreed months ago, weeks ago at
least, on a criteria which was, as it's written, just basically says a
federally qualified, registered campaign is the first criteria.
The next piece is you take the five most recent national credibly
recognized polls and you average a candidate's performance in the
polls. If they cross a one-percent threshold, they'll be
invited. The RPOF has been moving forward on that criteria as
being what would happen. And based on that we determined the
eight national leading candidates who would appear on our straw poll
ballot.
"FOX a couple of days ago informed us that their read of that exact
same criteria was that the five most recent national polls that include
the candidate, By our calculation if we take the five most
recent, if a candidate wasn't listed for part of the poll, then that's
a zero. That person wasn't in the poll so there's no points to be
conducted in the average. But FOX said if you look at the last
five that candidate was in, that's where you do the calculation.
There was a candidate that they went back and did a calculation of
who's been added to the debate roster in the last day and a half."
3. Analysis by the website "Dawn
of
the
Weak" of candidate talking time during the debate
found that Romney led at 12:09 followed by Perry (11:10), Huntsman
(07:41), Santorum (07:06), Cain (06:23), Bachmann (06:13), Gingrich
(05:44), Paul (04:33) and Johnson (04:10).