Second Republican primary debate had the lowest TV viewership since 2015

whats to watch. a bunch of un-empathetic sycophants pretending to have a platform or relevance to an audience already "not votin for a lib"

It was even worse than you're imagining.
- I dunno, I'm imagining them doing the Nazi salute to punctuate the end of their hate speech.

This is incredibly obvious but it’s stated this way because a more honest headline would be uninteresting. The last time there was a serious Republican primary was 2015.

So they’re saying debate ratings are lower than the last time there wasn’t an obvious front runner. Yeah, no shit cnbc. Good job.

Yeah, the better question is - whose actually watching? Trump is obviously going to be the nominee unless he's literally forced off the ballot, and if that happens it's just going to be chaos because I guarentee he's just going to continue running as a write in candidate

Watching a bunch of assholes "debate" (read: regurgitate canned talking points on cue) who are only going to lose the primary to a bigger asshole, who is even in the room, is kinda pointless. Especially when said bigger asshole already lost one general election and may well be on track to lose an other one., So, we could either watch losers who are losing to a loser; or, spend our time more productively. Like say, insulting said losers on the internet. Not a hard choice.

We need to be mindful that he can win the general election too. Lots of angry white racists out there and even more evangelicals.
- No need to get white into it, racist is sufficient. Trump has plenty of black and Hispanic supporters. I don't know if they are all racists, but they are definitively assholes.
- Yeah… he lost the general election, but only by a hair, and a LOT of work went into grabbing last minute votes.
  The most dangerous thing you can do is be complacent.
  We need to vote and we need to get others to vote.
- Ya, while I was being flippant about it, I do agree that Trump has a very real chance of winning the General Election. I well remember the noise over polling in 2016 and Nate Silver's epic rant (he was right) about how the data should be looked at.
  I'm curious to see how things shake out in the General Election this time around. And I wonder if Biden's Campaign will lean into Trump's criminal actions. In 2016, Trump's campaign pushed the "lock her up!" narrative over Clinton's email server. Now that we have clear evidence of Trump mishandling, hiding and attempting to hang onto clearly marked classified information (some of which is clearly SCI or NNPI), will we get choruses of "lock him up!"? At the same time, Trumpets seem to revel in Trump's crimes and prosecution as almost a badge of honor and/or an underdog fighting "the man". The irony of Trump pretty much being the definition of "the man" seems lost on his supporters. But hey, no one ever said politics has to make sense.
- TheyAreTheSamePicture.jpg
- i think the orangewad literally killed his margin by turning covid into a liberal fever dream.
Does this mean they eventually got "tired of winning"? Or are they now trying to win at losing too?
- Demagogues always need to project an image of control, power and invincibility, reality be damned. I'd expect more of the same from them, and it's why it's important to keep pointing out their failures. By proving how weak and vulnerable they are, it helps to break the narrative they are trying to build. It's all about perception, facts are less important than belief. But, facts can be useful in shaping belief.
- "Successful" failures. AKA disgraces of humanity.
I mean, I didn't watch it either, but If you are in a state that isn't purple, maybe you should be registered as a Republican to be part of the primary to pick the best of the worst. My state only has primary by party.
- I'm in Virginia, which is pretty purple. That said, we have open primaries, but you are only allowed to vote in one. I have seriously considered voting in the Republican Primary for that reason. Biden is going to win any sort of Democratic Primary; so, not much point voting in the DNC Primary. However, I don't expect my vote would be impactful at all. Southwest Virginia has Trump's cock so far down it's collective throat it stopped being oral and started being anal. Even where I'm at, we have idiots whose yards have been decorated with Trump banners for over 7 years now. If he doesn't win the GOP Primary in Virginia, I'll be incredibly surprised.
  If I do go out to vote in the GOP Primary, I'd probably have to pick Haley, just for the fun of seeing Republicans lining up behind a woman for a reason other than groping her. Also, I think it would be hilarious to see leftist pundits twist themselves in knots dealing with the GOP having a relatively younger woman and a minority as their candidate versus the old white guy. But, with her currently polling well behind DeSantis and a very, very distant third to Trump, I suspect that has basically zero chance of happening.

If they win it won't be long before you're not allowed to say that "P" word anymore 😉
- Platform or period? I could see it being both

I mean, they have nothing interesting to say, no policies to discuss, and are a black hole of charisma.

Ramaswamy has ideas about policies. But they're horrible policies.
- To his credit, he does appear to be the only GOP candidate with clear, actionable policies he is pushing.
  They are batshit insane, but at least he has ideas other than "vote against anything the Dems like."
That last part is all that really matters in this case. None of them can make their insanity interesting to watch without the reality TV star around.

[...] lowest viewership since 2015

Hasn't there only been one other debate since then...? That's rather misleading.

lowest ratings since the first one a little bit ago.
Is the article only looking at presidential primary debates, or all Republican primary debates?
- It also represents — by a significant margin — the lowest TV audience for any Republican presidential debate since the start of the 2016 cycle, when Trump first became a candidate.
Probably looking at all republican debates since 2015. In short, the lowest its been since Trump.

Why would you want to watch? They're all a bunch of losers and one worse than the next. They're the current failures that rose to the top.

None have compelling arguments or solutions and are only there to shitsling each other. Even monkeys at the zoo are smarter.

Who wants to watch a bunch of mentally ill psychopaths talk over each other? I sure don’t.

Wasn't Jersey shore insanely popular?
- Not the tryouts for it.
- They were running their mouths not trying to run the country.
To the most of the world, they are "mentally ill psychopaths", but to their rabid supporters, they can do no wrong. They will still watch them, cheer them on, and support them and vote for them...
- That’s the thing, though. They don’t actually have rabid supporters. Trump does, and they want his supporters to support them.
  That’s why no one is interested in watching their debates. The people who actually care about debates aren’t interested in their nonsense, and the ones whose vote they are courting are just waiting for Trump to give them the Go signal.
- Clearly not that many of them.

So in other words, lower than the ones in 2019?

Was there a repugnican debate in 2019?
- You're right, there wasn't. I didn't read the article at first since I thought the title was clickbait, but it seems like they're actually saying the ratings were lower than any debate in 2015 or later. They just phrased it in a confusing way.

What, you don’t think that 70 million racist conservative rubes would vote for a brown man with the name Ramaswamy?
- You think half the voting population is racist? The fact that he's on that stage, or Nikki Hailey was elected governor, or the last governor of Louisiana, or the FCC head under Trump exist should tell you how wrong you are. Your team does not own all the brown people.

It's Republicans debating against each other? Like aren't they all the same?

"I'm a piece of shit."
"No I'm a piece of shit!"
"Heh... that's cute. I'm the biggest piece of shit."
rapturous applause
- Narrator: The audience was the biggest piece of shit, after all...
It is a championship of "Who is the most shitty politition behind Trump".
Listen to the difference between their opinions on Ukraine
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1707219590877421736
- Holy shit some of those are comedy gold! These assholes are on the same team which makes it even more funny!
- I only got the Chris Christie clip. Are there supposed to be more?
- That is kind of a good point tho? Why are we ridiculing this person/debate (I'm not familiar all) based on this video?
They're all racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, and antisemitic, just in different orders.

Nobody wants to watch a bunch of losers kiss the ass of an elephant who isn't even in the room (honorable mention to C. Christie who clearly does not kiss Trump's ass)

Chris Christie. Maybe the least smelly turd in the group. He still smells like shit and now the question is whether he's only trying to separate himself from the others while still planning to deliver the exact same steaming mess any of them would. Is he hedging his bet that trump is falling to the charges?
- At this point, they all are counting on the chance that he won't be able to run for one reason or another.

Couldn't watch it without a cable subscription or signing up for a streaming service. That's probably at least part of it.

It means the people voting republican already know everything they need to know because of their top secret source on youtube with 13.4 million subscribers.
- Linus tech tips?

"Are you not entertained?"

There was a second Republican primary debate?

FR, first I've heard of it.

But didn't they watch in the hopes that Vivek would spit out some rhymes? Vivek rhymes with cake, you know.

I'd think about the same amount as previous debates.
None of the candidates are compelling or inspirational. At least Biden is good at the job and gets things done. He's fine and competent. All I see on the Republican side are idiots yelling with no solutions or answers. I don't even think the Republicans could be that bad if they could just get their shit together and actually try to do something for regular folks. People don't get elevated with Republicans, they get stepped on.
- fine and competent.
  He can't even read a teleprompter. I think he's a better option than Trump, but jesus. He's a decrepit old man.

Who?

I had no idea it was happening. None.

I imagine you don't watch the news then
- I don't watch cable news, no.

They are all running for VP candidate but are too dumb to realize it.

They're well aware of it, it's why they're not really badmouthing Trump.
- Christie did in the first debate if I heard correctly
Except we all know Trump will pick his VP during an Adderall fuelled constipation party on social media. So it could be either of these morons, regardless of their debating performance (I use those words liberally).
Or it could be Kanye.
- I heard someone point out that Trump might want a dynasty and pick Don Jr. That's probably the most likely option now that I think about it. His son is one person who will be loyal no matter what and and someone who would be even worse than him if he is removed from office.
But that's the thing, even if they're the VP on ticket, all they're going to do is sink the ticket further. Voting for any of these buffoons, whether it be locally, nationally, VP or president, is just asinine. They're all condescending as fuck and they all think we're too stupid to realize how much they suck. It's weird, but I miss the days of Bob Dole and McCain.

News media use to have a respectability solely by being the people carrying the torch. With every inch of our lives being saturated with what ever digital media we want to consume at any given moment the established news media has run its course. Not even mentioning all its faults and the bullshit it propagates. You had 50 years and we are tired of the show. Please cancel, do not renew.

What a surprise? Why would anyone watch when the front runner isint even going to be there.

If trump isn’t in the debate it’s not worth watching to be honest.

Oddly enough it's still not worth it if he's there. I've seen the exact same scene every time I flush after dropping a deuce. Adding an unflushable nugget to the bowl doesn't change much.
It'd be the same thing just slightly louder and less coherent...