Explaining the TWO Republican debates on FOX

Ok, Metro faithful, we’re gonna do our best to explain the Fox network’s Republican debate to you. Uh, we mean, debates.

A funny thing happened on the way to Thursday night’s anticipated showdown with 14 of the 17 candidates — yes 17.

Fox decided to have two debates. The original idea was that the bottom three in the polls would simply be booted from the roster.

Now, the top 10 are at what we’ll call The Adults Table and the bottom seven are at The Kiddie Table.

Got that? Good.

Sitting at the head of The Adult table is the man who is clobbering all comers — New York’s own Donald Trump. In Fox’s newest poll,Trump gets 26 percent of self-identified Republican primary voters — up from 18 percent in mid-July.

Trump has been called a “cancer on conservatism” and “unfit to be commander-in-chief” by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who is making a second run for his party’s nomination.

This is all you need to know about Perry: He is at The Kiddie Table.

Fox made its decision based on the average of five recent polls.

THE ADULTS and their POLL AVERAGE
Donald Trump—23.4 percent
Jeb Bush — 12 percent
Scott Walker — 10.2 percent
Mike Huckabee — 6.6 percent
Ben Carson — 5.8 percent
Ted Cruz — 5.4 percent
Marco Rubio — 5.4 percent
Rand Paul — 4.8 percent
Chris Christie — 3.4 percent
John Kasich — 3.2 percent

THE KIDS
Rick Perry — 1.8 percent
Rick Santorum –1.4 percent
Bobby Jindal — 1.4 percent
Carly Fiorina –1.3 percent
Lindsey Graham — 0.7 percent
George Pataki — 0.6 percent
Jim Gilmore — 0.2 percent

The Adults get two hours in prime time, by the way, starting at 9 p.m. The Kids? One hour at 5 p.m.

Oh the humanity!

John A. Oswald is editor-at-large at Metro and can be found on Twitter@nyc_oz.
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