With 17 Republicans vying for the presidential nomination and a famous celebrity contender sucking up the national media attention all summer, MSNBC's Chris Hayes began the countdown to when the first candidate will drop out and took wagers on who exactly that first candidate will be on last night's edition of "All In":
We`re going to start seeing people dropping and I should note this, we already had a big person drop out at this point in the last cycle in 2011 and that was Tim Pawlenty who dropped out I believe August 14, 2011. So already -- and Pawlenty was a very hyped candidate. A lot of people thought the guy might be the next president of the United States, declared it so in public and he was out at this point.
MSNBC contributor Josh Barro predicted that former Texas governor Rick Perry would be the first of the 17 candidates to drop out of the race, noting his campaign's inability to raise enough funds to even pay his campaign staffers -- to which Hayes joked, "Good luck on your mortgages, Perry staffers":
BARRO: The only reason to drop out now is if you were in this because you thought you might win and now it`s clear you might not win. There are various people who never had any shot of winning. Lindsey Graham is in this to raise the profile of a issue that he cares about a lot, the fact that he's polling at less 4than 1 percent doesn't really matter from -- or well, he'd rather be polling higher, but he's not going to look at the polls and be like "oh, no, I can't win, I better drop out."
Rick Perry's theory was that he ought to be the Republican nominee for president. He was a popular, very long serving governor of the second largest state in the country, he was thought to be a front-runner four years ago. He really hasn't been able to get any traction, and he was discussing there, he hasn't been able to raise enough money to pay his staff. So he's the one who I see the least rationale for him to stay in.
Chicago Sun-Times Washington bureau chief Lynn Sweet agreed that South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham was unlikely to drop out of the race anytime soon despite his very low polling, arguing that "you never discount the ability of the psyche to keep people in races even when their chances aren't there if they have a cause."
Watch the segment, via MSNBC:
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