On Thursday, August 6th, Fox News is sponsoring the first debate for Republican presidential candidates. There are 16 who are nationally recognized. Debate criteria limit the number to the ten who poll the highest in an average of the five most recent national polls as of August 4th.
Fox then announced that it would also hold a second, one-hour debate at 5 pm for the others. Originally, it was to exclude any who did not poll 1% or more, but they relented and decided to include all of the 16 recognized in national polls.
Here's a suggestion that I think would be preferable. Hold two equal-time debates, with 8 candidates in each.
How to choose which for which? Here's what a simple alphabetical division, would look like. Numbers are from the latest CNN poll.
Group A Group B
Jeb Bush 15 % John Kasich 4 %
Ben Carson 4 % George Pataki 2 %
Chris Christie 4 % Rand Paul 6 %
Ted Cruz 6 % Rick Perry 3 %
Carly Fiorina 1 % Marco Rubio 7 %
Lindsey Graham 2 % Rick Santorum 1 %
Mike Huckabee 5 % Donald Trump 18 %
Bobby Jindal 2 % Scott Walker 10 %
Looking at how this turns out, however, Group B has three of the four front-runners (Trump, Walker, Rubio), leaving only Bush in Group A. So then I regrouped them according to poll numbers, trying to balance the numbers A = total of 45%, B = 45%. Of course, I based this only on this one CNN poll and the final group might differ. But this seems fairest to me. As for the loudmouth balance, Group A has Trump, while Group B has Christie. For the outrageous comments balance, Group A has Cruz and Group B has Huckabee.
Group A2 Group B2
Donald Trump 18 % Jeb Bush 15 %
Marco Rubio 7 % Scott Walker 10 %
Rand Paul 6 % Ted Cruz 6 %
Ben Carson 4 % Mike Huckabee 5 %
John Kasich 4 % Chris Christie 4 %
Rick Perry 3 % Lindsey Graham 2 %
George Pataki 2 % Bobby Jindal 2 %
Rick Santorum 1 % Carly Fiorino 1 %
Will Fox News take my advice? No.
Ralph
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