On August 5, nine candidates seeking the Republican presidential nomination debated each other in Des Moines, Iowa. The debate lasted 90 minutes and was broadcast on ABC. Once more, although not every candidate had an equal amount of time, fundamentally each of the nine was able to express himself. With each such successful multi-candidate primary debate, it becomes more and more difficult for the Commission on Presidential Debates to justify limiting its general election debates to only the two major party nominees. Some of the Republican debaters today are at or below 1% in Republican polls, yet their inclusion was valuable.
You make a brilliant point (as usual).
However, you overlook one other point: That commission is the “Bipartisan Commission,” and its primary purpose is to exclude the better and more interesting candidates.
I attended this debate and many people in the room felt insulted by ABC, Mr. Yepsen and George Steponallofus by thier bias in allocating questions to the candidates. Sitting in that room was like being an extra in a Romney tv ad. These complaints were taken to president of ABC news that was sitting in the room . He seemed to have little concern for the opinions of his veiwing public . This like the other debates is a demonstration of the need for fec standards for debates!!
It is truly perplexing that the Democrats and Republicans keep having these mega-ultra candidates things (I can’t call them debates) – as many as ten candidates at a time – and then say with a straight face during the general election that having more than two candidates onstage is confusing to the voters, unwieldy, blah blah blah, as if everyone has completely forgotten all about the primary season.
I think the bottom line reason is that it’s completely harmless to have Tancredo, Paul, Kucinich, Gravel, etc. involved because there’s no so-called “spoiling” at the primary level. But having 1 or 2% in the polls during the general election season could carry some major weight in some states, as we all know. It seems to me that there’s a lesson to be learned here for the general election from how delegates are mainly allocated (i.e. proportionally) during the primaries.