The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal’s “Best of the Web” at WSJ written by the editor, James Taranto.
News of the Tautological
- “Hurricane Joaquin’s Local Impact to Be Determined”—headline, Poughkeepsie (N.Y.) Journal, Sept. 30
- “Vinyl Record Sales Generated More Money This Year Than Free Streaming Music”—headline, Gizmodo, Sept. 30
What, Like With an Ax or Something?
“Hillary Clinton Joked About Chinese Hacking Her Email”—headline, WeeklyStandard, Sept. 30
The Paul Bubble Pops
We can’t remember if we made this prediction publicly or not, but we’ll own up to (probably) getting it wrong: We thought Rand Paul would be a somewhat strong contender for the Republican presidential nomination. His father, Ron Paul, topped 10% of the aggregate primary vote in 2012 and 20% in more than a few contests. We figured that would be Paul fils’s base of support—which, being neither a grumpy old man nor quite as outré ideologically as Dad, he could build on.
Well, so much for that. London’s DailyMail reports:
CNBC has announced the polling qualifications for the Republican primary debate it will host on October 28 in Colorado, and the network’s criteria could leave Rand Paul listening to the sound of his own voice during the “undercard” portion of the evening’s events.
Candidates will have to reach an average of 3 per cent support in polls released between Sept. 17 and Oct. 21 in order to qualify for the main event at 8:00 p.m. A 2.5 per cent average will be rounded up to 3, CNBC said Wednesday.
Those with at least 1 per cent will be invited to an earlier debate at 6:00 p.m.
The rules leave open the possibility that Paul, a Senator from Kentucky, could be alone on stage for what columnists have taken to calling the ‘kids table’ portion of the evening.
Paul is the only candidate averaging between 1 and 2.5 per cent in the six national polls released since Sept. 17, according to a running total maintained by Real Clear Politics.
His average sits at 2.3 per cent as of Wednesday afternoon.
Perhaps we underestimated the appeal of grumpy old men.
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”
