probably has at this point. but the debate is an opportunity for the voters at this early stage to try to assess some of these folks who are mostly unknown to most of the voters who are going to be deciding. and look, it s not a national primary. it s iowa, it s new hampshire, it s south carolina. what do the national polls mean, especially when you are carrying them out to decimal points and rountd rounding up, rounding down, margins of error, and the like? it doesn t serve the democracy that well. that s why we chose not to. there will be enough time down the he had ro. right now i don t think the public polls should be used in this way. lee, thank you. i want to bring back the panel right now. what do you guys think of what lee is sething, divide the candidates at random into a two-hour long debate? first to you, van. i think that would be good. part of thing is, the republicans in some ways were hurt by having too many debates. this time, you really do need to
tempted to lash out and attack donald trump as a way of either raising their own profiles or trying to knock trump out of the race. okay. i personally think that would be a mistake. i don t see any way up to this point in the race, every attack that s hurled at donald trump only makes hiss him stronger. yeah. i don t see any way that attacking him is going to really hurt him in this debate. john, can i ask you something about rick son torm. he carried 11 states last go around. according to the latest poll, he won t be participating thursday night. what s going through his mind? i think a lot of people sit there and say the first debate may be the more substantial debate. the second is going to be more chaotic because of donald trump. second of all, what we found in the last two presidential elections on the republican side are polls right now mean absolutely nothing. i was with rudy giuliani in 2008. and he had a double digit lead about this point but we know it was going
good evening to all of you. i m glad to have you here. van, i want to start with you. what do you think the other candidates think about donald trump at this point? he is not losing any strength at all going into this debate. i think a lot of republicans were saying this is going to be a snowflake a soap bubble, he will have his happy moment and move away. a lot of democrats said that, too. i said it. and we were wrong this. guy is for real. he is a threat. he is going to be there. and i think if i were any of the serious accounts certainly if you are jeb bush you are look at thursday as an opportunity. can you do something that at least lets people know that there is a difference between someone who is a great media permit versus a great leader? but donald trump is for real. and when did you come to that realization, van? because i remember you saying oh, no. as usual, don, you got there first. you were trying to warn us. you were right. i i was wrong. i don t mind admit
averaging of their polls and announce it to the rest of us. we hope to know more about that certainly by this time tomorrow. i can tell you though in our own cnn poll of polls, or an average of polls, it looks as though the top eight are pretty much solidified and it s the bottom two spots are going to be a battle between ohio governor john kasich, new jersey governor chris christie, and former texas governor rick perry. we ll have to wait and see. christie, perry and casic going to be fighting it out to get into the debate. what s the latest now? we ve been hearing about the vice president possibly getting in, joe biden. a lot of voters are asking will he or won t he? well that s the big question here. we don t know yet whether or not he is going to choose to jump into the race. we know it s something he has thought about a lot. he has already run twice before. vice president biden feels like he would do a good job as president.
asking primary voters who they are supporting? i think it is a bad use of public polls to sort of let the polls dictate not only what the candidates are doing because now they are all trying to get a bump in the last couple of weeks to get higher polls to get into the debate. i don t think the polls are designed with that precision carried out with decimal points and margins of error to consider. it is not a good use of public polls to try to decide who should be on the stage or shouldn t be on the stage you. feel like you are affecting in some way the election, right? the election process? i think polls are supposed to measure public opinion. media is supposed to cover it. now you have got a media sponsored debate which is reline on polls to determine who is going to participate. how would you like to see it handled. two one hour debates. let everybody decide who is going to get into debate a, debate b. scott walker, 42% of republicans