Roll Call: Post-CNN Debate Thoughts

Republican presidential candidates Mike Huckabee, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) take part in the presidential debates at the Reagan Library on September 16, 2015 in Simi Valley, California. Fifteen Republican presidential candidates are participating in the second set of Republican presidential debates. (Photo by Justin Sullivan, Getty Images)

(Stuart Rothenberg, Roll Call) – Given there are still four and one-half months until the Iowa caucuses, why would any Iowa Republican make a final decision right now about which candidate he or she will support?

Yet that didn’t stop CNN from treating Wednesday night’s GOP debate at the Reagan Library as the Super Bowl, with a countdown clock and the suffocating self-promotion that we have all come to expect these days.

For too many in the media, today — each day — is always the most important day in the history of the universe. Tomorrow? Nobody cares about tomorrow, until tomorrow arrives, at which point it becomes the most important day in the history of the universe. And that day is particularly important if it’s your network’s turn to cover the day.

CNN spent much of the debate baiting each candidate to attack his or her colleagues, hoping to create what professional wrestling used to call a royal rumble — when all of the contenders enter the ring and beat up on each other until a single hopeful has survived.

Of course, all of that is scripted in professional wrestling, so CNN repeatedly had to try to create verbal fisticuffs to make sure that the combatants would leave enough blood on the ground to make things interesting.

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