Let's begin with the first event, the "undercard" debate: future debate organizers should make a New Year's resolution to scrap it in the months ahead. The undercard debates have had some utility in 2015. Two main-stage debaters Tuesday night, Carly Fiorina and Chris Christie, have spent one debate each on the kids' stage, giving both candidates a much-needed sense of urgency to perform well.
But the undercard has outlived its usefulness, and Tuesday's participants--Lindsey Graham
... the endangered South Carolina RINO...
, Mike Huckabee, George Pataki, and Rick Santorum
...unsuccessful candidate for president and former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania. He was a lawyer before becoming the Representative for suburban Pittsburgh in 1991. He lost his Senate seat in 2006 to Bob Casey, a Democrat machine politician and political dynast. Santorum is a social conservative who thinks the rest of the country is, too...
--are polling so poorly they barely register as blips in the Real Clear Politics averages of national and early state polls. Onetime undercarders Rick Perry and Bobby Jindal recognized they were going nowhere in the presidential race and got out. It's up to each candidate himself--and their donor(s)--whether he should quit the campaigns, but the TV networks ought to do their part to encourage our hapless undercarders by dropping the increasingly useless JV debates.
Meanwhile,
...back at the buffalo wallow, Yellow Wolf clutched at his chest and fell from his horse...
there are a couple of candidates performing way below their status as main-stage debaters--chiefly Kentucky senator Rand Paul, whose hide was saved from the undercard by the generous folks at CNN. Paul is leading a libertarian movement in the Republican party that's atrophied away in the same way his poll numbers have. His best position is in Iowa, where he's been stalled out since August at below four percent support. Paul is simultaneously running for reelection to his Senate seat. In the unlikely event he delivers an all-star performance Tuesday night and prompts a stampede of supporters to bolt from Ted Cruz, he's likely to spend the next 10 months campaigning in his old Kentucky home.
The same might be said for Carly Fiorina, who burst onto the main stage in September after the only breakout performance on the undercard stage in August. Fiorina's spurt of support has sputtered out, however, and she's in Rand-Paul territory in most of the poll averages. Like Paul, she doesn't have an early state to hold out for. Fiorina's polling best in New Hampshire, at an average of 4.7 percent, but that puts her behind 7 other candidates. Without a compelling message beyond her ability to skewer Hillary Clinton
... sometimes described as
For a good time at 3 a.m. call Hillaryand at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as
Another Elihu Root...
as perhaps none of the male Republican candidates could, it's hard to see a reason for her candidacy, or her appearance on the debate stage, after December.