Rick Santorum Slams Fox News for ‘Arbitrary’ Debate Rules

Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum isn’t happy with Fox News, given their announced guidelines for the first GOP debate. “Fox News announced it would limit participation to those GOP candidates who rank in the top 10 of five national polls in the months leading up to the debate in Cleveland.”

Santorum called the guidelines “arbitrary” and “not legitimate,” as pointed out in this National Journal report:

“I’m probably the best person to comment on this. In January of 2012 I was at 4 percent in the national polls, and I won the Iowa caucuses. I don’t know if I was last in the polls, but I was pretty close to last,” Santorum said. “And so the idea that a national poll has any relationship to the viability of a candidate—ask Rudy Giuliani that. Ask Phil Gramm that. You can go on down the list of folks who were doing real well in national polls and didn’t win a single state and were not a viable candidate.”

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“I’m hopeful that people will listen to the comments—I mean, I’m sure they put this out there to get comments,” he said. “And I’m not criticizing or condemning them. I’m really not. Hopefully they put it out there and they’re going to listen to what the comments are, and factor those in, and determine what is the right way.”

Some commenters on Twitter pointed out the contrast with the reaction from Carly Fiorina’s camp, as previously reported by Breitbart News:

Carly posted on Twitter: “Glad @FoxNews released metrics for 1st debate. I’ll look forward to making the cut and making my case to GOP voters on Aug 6th.”

Fiorina’s spokesperson Sarah Isgur Flores also took to Twitter, saying, “@CarlyFiorina has exceeded expectations her whole life. See you in Cleveland! #GOPDebate.”