CNN Undercard Republican Debate: Live Coverage

This sequence of undercard debates says a lot about how people consume news. Most people will never watch these undercard debates. At best, they’ll read an article or see a post with a video clip. The question is: What is the value to most citizens of watching the undercard debate? And more broadly, does anyone measure the differences between debate-watchers and the non-debate-watching majority in terms of how they process the political race?

Less glibly: I’m curious why Mike Huckabee has made so little impact on this campaign, because he’s probably the only one of the four candidates on stage who had more than a 1 percent chance of winning the nomination when the race began. I don’t have a good answer to that question about Huckabee, but it’s an interesting question. He was a pretty good candidate in 2008 and started the race with reasonably high favorability ratings.

I agree with Leah — the candidates clearly wished they could argue with people other than each other. Instead they competed to sound the most hawkish and the most mawkish about protecting their descendants and yours.