Fox News Plays Coy: Tonight's 'Surprise' GOP Debate in New Hampshire

Image - USATT

FOX pulled a good one over the public this week with today's "Breaking News" announcement of a roundtable GOP debate tonight on FOX News.

Over at FOX's You Decide 2008, FOX has put up this "breaking news" banner:

Breaking News >> Banner: GOP Presidential Hopefuls Go One-On-One Tonight at 8 PM ET On Fox News Channel

Scattered through an article "48 Hours and lots of Campaigning Ahead of New Hampshire Primary" are the details of tonight's "impromptu" GOP debate.

Watch FOX News at 8 p.m. Sunday for a roundtable discussion with five Republican presidential candidates.

The roundtable format will feature McCain, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee. Neither Ron Paul nor Duncan Hunter was invited to the discussion, causing widespread complaints from their supporters and the Paul campaign. Source - FOX NEWS

One wonders if the 'last minute' debate was because FOX had trouble getting candidates to accept or they were afraid of last week's reaction from the Ron Paul camp, after calls to boycott FOX and reign down mass destruction through emails to FOX were made when it was learned Paul was not to be invited.

We look forward to tonight's round table discussion on FOX and a further fisking of this week's events that led up to this debate.

Update:

It was Ron Paul supporters who first brought the potential Jan. 6 GOP FOX debate to our attention. Some Paulians were furious and had decided to take action.

We attempted to contact FOX and were unsuccessful. We perused their website and found nothing about a Jan. GOP debate, forum, etc..

We contacted the New Hampshire State Republicans who told us, "no comment."

From DBKP: Rumors Ron Paul Dissed by FOX Untrue

A drumbeat of faux outrage from the Ron Paul campaign is gaining momentum across the web.

"Ron Paul's been dumped from the FOX Republican Debate," bloggers beat out on their drums.

Where did this message originate from? Did FOX really dump Paul from a debate, forum, or Sunday Brunch?

The pieces of the Chinese Finger Puzzle:

The Boston Globe's James Pinell put out this piece:

Paul: Fox News is 'scared of me'

PLAISTOW, N.H. -- Ron Paul said the decision to exclude him from a debate on Fox News Sunday the weekend before the New Hampshire Primary is proof that the network "is scared" of him.

Pindell goes on to enclose a quote from Paul:

"They are scared of me and don't want my message to get out, but it will," Paul said in an interview at a diner here. "They are propagandists for this war and I challenge them on the notion that they are conservative.

The Jan 6th Debate, Forum, Brunch, whatever... was the topic of discussion for well over a week.

FOX refused to answer calls inquiring about a potential Jan. 6th GOP Debate. From the DBKP piece Ron Paul Debates, Forums, FOX, NH, and What We Know:

DBKP was going to publish a timeline later today on the Ron Paul situation at the New Hampshire forum/debate/brunch/luncheon/get-together on January 6th.

We have sifted through a ton of reports, blog postings, sources, phone calls, emails and comments. We'd first like to say "THANK YOU" to everyone who has attempted to help bring order to a confused state of affairs.




That being said, there are some inaccurate reports and postings out there. When trying to trace the source of these, it either is 1) the same sources repeating wrong or inaccurate information and linking back and forth to each other, or 2) reading information into what has actually been stated.

A third possible source of inaccuracy is the "friend told it a friend who heard it from a friend" syndrome. We have several emails which directly contradict each other, each claiming the same source as proof.

While checking to see if anything new and known has popped up--not recycled reports from somewhere else already checked--we came across this posting by William Westmiller on Nolan Chart.

We do not know William. But his report below is as accurate as we have been able to verify at this point in time. It may prove to contain errors, but we couldn't find any, based on what DBKP knows at this moment. Source - DBKP



By LBG




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