I don’t put much stock in online surveys, which is why I wasn’t exactly setting my hair on fire over samples such as that Survey Monkey poll which came out within 48 hours of the debate showing The Donald standing strong after his “disastrous” debate performance. Pretty much ditto for the Morning Consult one. I’m waiting to see what some of the standard, wide sample phone surveys will say, but these online polls do start to carry more weight now that we’ve given the nation time to really soak in all of the analysis and media hoopla . Now the fallout is pretty well baked into the cake and Reuters/Ipsos has finished their next run (also an online poll, sadly, but with a pretty good track record) conducted entirely after the Showdown at the Donald – Megyn corral. The real estate mogul has clearly been rejected by Republican voters across the land. Well… if by rejected you mean that he’s still on top of the field and doubling Jeb Bush’s numbers.

There is no sign that Donald Trump’s raucous first presidential debate is hurting his support among party voters, with the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll showing he still has a big lead over his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination…

Trump led the party’s 17-strong 2016 presidential field with the backing of 24 percent of Republican voters, unchanged from before Thursday’s televised debate, the Reuters/Ipsos poll found.

His closest rival, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, trails at 12 percent, down from 17 percent before the debate. No other candidate earned more than 8 percent in the online poll, conducted between the end of the debate and Sunday.

The Reuters sample is a little bit of an odd duck, not for the leaders who show up but for how poorly the second tier competitors do, but the spread from first to seventh still tends to run in the same order as the other big name samples even if the margins vary a bit. The real story here, though, is that while Jeb Bush is still somehow in second place, Trump is doubling him up. And Bush dropped five points as opposed to the MSM theme that Trump’s “boorish” debate showing would make him seem like the more reasonable one.

That five points is found pretty quickly since Carly Fiorina surged from a background noise level one percent up to six percent in this survey. This is also consistent with what we’ve seen in the other recent samples.

Reuters dug up some interesting – and disturbing – comments from somebody at the RNC who seems to be running out of patience with Trump. (emphasis added)

With the next debate coming up Sept. 16 in California, hosted by CNN, some Republicans have discussed possible ways to make his participation dependent on forswearing talk of an independent presidential bid. Trump declined to rule out such a run in Thursday’s debate.

“Why should we give this guy, any person, 25 million eyeballs to help his candidacy or her candidacy for an independent run?” said a member of the Republican National Committee, referring to the 25 million people who watched the Fox debate.

Other committee members say trying to bump him from the debate could risk serious blowback from Trump, and he could always break any promise not to make a third-party bid.

First of all, I’m pretty sure that ship has sailed. The agreements between the RNC and CNN are already in place and at this point the hosting network is pretty much in control of the selection process and the format. The amount of influence the committee can exert on who is at the podiums and how Jake Tapper handles it is pretty close to zilch.

But the real question is, why would anyone with a spot on the Republican National Committee still be saying things like that aloud? If you’re seriously talking about taking a declared candidate who is not only in first place, but just smoking the rest of the field at this point and refusing to allow him a seat at the debate you’ve essentially nullified the validity of the process. The RNC doesn’t get to pick the nominee, nor does CNN or we annoying folks at Hot Air or the rest of the new media. The voters do, and that’s the end of the story. If a quarter of them want Trump then he must be heard at the debates.

Fortunately that comment came from an off the record RNC source. I’d like to hear Reince clarify the committee’s official position on this in short order.