Fred Barnes,a prominent Republican who is executive editor of the Weekly Standard, has this Wall Street Journal commentary about primary season presidential debates. He criticizes the recent Republican presidential debates on the grounds that too many candidates are included. He labels the candidates he doesn’t want in the debates as “Also-rans”, but of course “also ran” is the term for someone who already ran in an election and didn’t place among the top vote-getters. “Also-ran” is not an appropriate term at this point in the election season.

Also, he says, “The debates put the also-rans on equal footing with candidates who are well-financed and better organized”, but as anyone who has watched the recent debates knows, just because a candidate in invited into the debate does not mean he or she is put on an “equal footing.” The debate organizers this year have generally arranged things so that the “leading” candidates are in the center of the stage, and the others are near the edges of the stage. Also, not all candidates in these debates get equal time to speak. Some of these debates have given some of the candidates only two questions to respond to, whereas other candidates on the stage get as many as a dozen questions.

The ability of the sponsors of these Republican presidential debates to give preferred treatment to the leading candidates rebuts one argument in favor of inclusive general election debates. General election presidential debates in the U.S. generally exclude all but the Democratic and Republican nominees. But, clearly, from the examples of the recent presidential primary debates, it would be possible to have more candidates included in the general election debates, and still give most of the time and attention in those general election debates to just the Republican and Democratic nominees, just as Mitt Romney and Rick Perry got most of the time and attention in the last Republican presidential primary debates. Critics of inclusive general election debates sometimes say that it would be bad to include other candidates because that would decrease the amount of attention on the major party nominees, but that doesn’t logically follow.

Barnes does acknowledge that these recent Republican presidential debates are attracting large TV audiences. Herman Cain certainly would not be enjoying his success in polls if he had never been included in the debates.

On October 11, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Libertarian Party of New Hampshire v Gardner, 11-119. This is the case in which the First Circuit had said the U.S. Constitution does not provide any protection for party names on general election ballots, and if a state puts a candidate on the ballot with a party label, and the party had not nominated that candidate (but had nominated another candidate for the same office), the party has no recourse.

In November 2008, New Hampshire listed two Libertarians on the ballot for President, one whom the state and national party had nominated (Bob Barr) and someone else. The 10th circuit had ruled in 1984 that states must give parties protection for their names. There aren’t many lawsuits on this subject, because almost all states do provide party name protection.

The Court thus continues its 20-year behavior of refusing to hear any case brought by a minor party or independent candidate, unless a major party is also in the same case on the same side as the minor party or independent candidate (excluding a 1996 case brought by the Georgia Libertarian Party on whether states can force all candidates for state office to be tested for illegal drugs, which was really a Fourth Amendment case, not an election law case). During those same 20 years, however, the Court accepted three cases in which the minor party or independent candidate had won the case below, and reversed them. They had been brought by the states of Minnesota, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, and involved fusion, entrance into candidate debates, and whether a party may insist on an open primary for itself.