Why is CNN blocking Gary Johnson from its debate?
2012 Elections, Breaking News Monday, June 13th, 2011
By: Luke Broadwater, Baltimoresun.com
On Monday night, CNN, the New Hampshire Union Leader and other sponsors will hold a debate in New Hampshire — and Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum will all be attending.
That’s virtually every major declared Republican candidate. Except one. And that exclusion — and the reasoning behind it — is downright puzzling.
Meet Gary Johnson. He’s a two-term governor of New Mexico. (That’s one more term than Mitt Romeny and almost two terms more than Sarah Palin.) Johnson holds many positions that Republicans might like: While governor, he did what most politicians find impossible: Actually shrinking government (not just slowing the expansion of government). He vetoed more bills than the 49 other governors combined.
But it’s not just the fact that Johnson has more top executive experience than any other GOP candidate (or his success in the very-difficult art of actually limiting government) that makes his exclusion strange. He also qualifies for inclusion in the debate based on CNN’s own criteria.
CNN’s criterion No. 2 states that any candidate who demonstrates the following will be included in the debate: “A candidate must have received an average of at least 2.00 % in at least three national polls released between May 1 and May 31 that were conducted by the following: ABC, AP, Bloomberg, CBS, CNN, FOX, Gallup, Los Angeles Times, Marist, McClatchy, NBC, Newsweek, Pew, Quinnipiac, Reuters, USA Today and Time.”
The Johnson campaign quickly jumped on this criterion and produced required three polls (by CNN, Gallup and Quinnipiac) whose average puts Johnson squarely at 2 percent.
The debate organizers responded: Those polls aren’t good enough. Those polls were “restrictive” polls and we only count “unrestrictive” polls, they now say.
To read more, visit: http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/bthesite/the-ridiculous-report-blog/bal-why-is-cnn-blocking-gary-johnson-from-its-debate-20110612,0,7118243.story?track=rss
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Can’t have two libertarians reinforing each other. With two, they can’t isolate and margainlize.
I am a Ron Paul supporter, but Gary Johnson is another great candidate that should be allowed to be heard.
There were powerful vested interests, people with enormous wealth and secretive plans, who want the two-party charade to continue unsoiled by principle and reason.
Those same vested interests will cross over in the Primaries and vote for the candidate they want to run against, because Obama will run unopposed and if he gets one vote he wins that state. if that is not enough for Obama to win, Trump has already set himself up as an “Independent” which he isn’t, he’s a bleeding Liberal, to siphon off enough votes to make Obama the winner even against a weak kneed opponent.
Why would we ever trust CNN to do anything fairly, if a conservative is involved. They would have excluded Michelle Bachmann if they could have. They will promote Mitt Romney or whomever they want Obama to run against.
CNN will always exclude anyone they think could resonate with the electorate!
We always referred to CNN as the Clinton News Network, when he was president and Ted Turner (Mr Jane Fonda) was the Chairman of the BORED.