On November 9th at 8:00 PM the top Republican Presidential contenders will gather at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, to discuss their vision for America and the top issues for Michigan voters: Jobs and the Economy.

This is your opportunity to see all the top Republican candidates, to watch the debate and share ideas with friends, family, and fellow conservatives as we work to win back the White House in 2012.

Right now, you can sign up online to attend a debate watch party.  It's fast.  It's easy.  And it's a great chance to get involved by hearing directly from the Republican Presidential candidates on their vision for turning our country around and making Barack Obama a ONE TERM president!

Can't find a debate watch party in your area?  Click here and put "debate watch" (without the quotation marks) in the search field.  Or, you can get involved today by hosting a Debate Watch Party in your home.

If you would like to host a debate watch party in your home with your friends, then please sign up here to host a debate watch party in your home with your friends and receive a special Debate Watch Party Kit!  Once you sign up online, you will receive all the tools you will need to invite your friends and have a successful event.  We need your name and address by November 2 so we can send you one of our Debate Watch Party Kits!

This is a great opportunity to bring all of your friends together in one location and get involved by hearing directly from the Republican Presidential candidates on their vision for turning our country around and making Barack Obama a ONE TERM president!

Our momentum is building for 2012.  The debate airs live on CNBC at 8pm Eastern on Wednesday, November 9th.  Drop by a debate party and join with millions of people across Michigan and our country who want to restore American leadership and bring prosperity back to our families.  Or be sure to get involved in the fight for Michigan and the Nation by hosting a Debate Watch Party!

Thanks again for all of your work in making sure we win again in 2012!

Sincerely,

Kim Jorns
Executive Director
Michigan Republican Party

Evidently, by all reasonable projections, Michigan is going to be a "competitive / in play" state this time around (along with: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin).  This may be evidenced by the fact that the current POTUS and VPOTUS seem to insist on swinging through on campaign tours.  (I know that they don't call them that, but if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and talks like a duck . . .)  Perhaps that's why we rate such a high-profile event at a critical point in the 2012 republican presidential primary cycle.

For those of you who may be interested, 2012 Election Central has the complete republican presidential debate schedule (including, most importantly, links to the full videos of each of the previous debates in this cycle).  However, I've noticed something that's conspicuous by its absence.

I looked at the Election Central schedule link, checked the CNBC website, the Oakland University website, the MIGOP website, and even the Wikipedia article.  Nowhere do I see a list of who's been invited to attend this debate.  C'mon guys, 11 days out and we don't yet have a publicly available list of who's going to be in attendance?  What's up with that?

Another thing, why in the hell has Gary Johnson (New Mexico) only received invitations to a grand total of two debates and Buddy Roemer (Louisiana) to none so far?  Evidently, there's a little known rule in place (derisively referred to as the "Anti-Gary Johnson Rule") that any candidate who hasn't polled at least 4% since November 2010 in at least one of eight recognized national polls (Gallup, Bloomberg, NBC/WSJ, ABC/Washington Post, CBS/The New York Times, CNN, FOX, and Associated Press) doesn't rate a debate invitation.

The amazing hypocrisy in that, as pointed out by both David Weigel and Katrina Trinko, is that the qualifying poll could have happened at any point in the previous year, never mind how long ago.  Apparently, as Neil Cavuto and Lee Fang point out, the system seems rigged so that certain not-exactly-mainstream candidates are deliberately excluded.  And the rules for that exclusion are drawn rather hypocritically, as a follow-up article by Weigel highlights.  Evidently, that same metric isn't also used to determine who is and isn't officially a "major candidate," else Gary Johnson wouldn't appear in both the Election Central and the Wikipedia candidates gallery.

If we were to apply the 4% rule to the current RCP Average, and use as a baseline the date when the current field of candidates was settled (August 14th, the date that Tim Pawlenty withdrew), then not only would Johnson and Roemer be excluded from debates, but so would Santorum and Huntsman.  Maybe that's a good thing, maybe that's not.  And really, absent any truly objective standard, who's to say who should or shouldn't be a "major candidate"?

But I digress.  Where was I, anyway?

Oh yeah, big to-do going on in Rochester in just under a couple of weeks.  Y'all might want to save the date and mark your calendars.