Assessing the Republican Debates

If you follow American politics at all, you're more than aware that the current scuttle around the blogs and the punditry is over who will make it to the Top 10 for the first GOP debate on FOX News.  Everyone has been clamoring over a myriad of topics, from whether Donald Trump will get the center of the stage (he almost certainly will) to which high-ranking senators and governors will be left off in favor of the former reality television show host.  Due to the fact that Trump will almost certainly make it while the likes of, say, Sen. Lindsey Graham almost certainly won't, I thought it was interesting to discuss who I thought should probably make the stage and what the RNC is hoping to get out of what is increasingly looking like a carnival act.

Honestly, the fairest way has to be national polling, even though that is a disservice to the party and in some ways to the country.  National polling is the only fair way to do the election, though as Sen. Graham stated, "Brad Pitt would be leading the polls if he had decided to run," and while Donald Trump is pretty much the antithesis of Brad Pitt in all areas (class, dignity, hair), he kind of proved that point.  Celebrity demands polling numbers.  A lesser-commented on subject is the fact that Ben Carson, a man who has absolutely no elected experience is also going to making the stage alongside Trump.  National polling may have its flaws, but at least it's fair.

But national polling keeps supposedly serious candidates like Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) off of the stage, thus depriving the RNC both of two major officeholders as well as two candidates who might add some substance to the debates.  Graham has been more than willing to take on Donald Trump, who is clearly the Black Plague according to party leaders right now, while Kasich is a strong foil to Jeb Bush and a better showing by him would make him a viable option to be Scott Walker or Marco Rubio's running mate should Bush falter.

I suspect that if they had a little more credibility with the grassroots wing of the party, the RNC would have liked to have gone with something along the lines of 10%, unless you are a current governor or senator to enter the first debate.  This would have probably gotten them roughly the debate stage they were hoping for, though Trump still makes the cut.  According to Real Clear Politics (if you're at all interested in this topic, this is the link you should bookmark), this would ensure Trump, Bush, and Walker would all be making the cut based on their current standings in the polls, as well as Rubio, Paul, Cruz, Christie, Kasich, Jindal, and Graham.  Coincidentally this number is also ten, but it's nine sitting officeholders plus Trump.  It precludes likely debaters Mike Huckabee and Ben Carson, admittedly, but it features the nine men I honestly think probably have the most to say about the current state-of-affairs in the Republican Party.  For all the press Trump (and Ben Carson) have mustered, the reality is that only one person in the entire history of the Republican Party (1940's Wendell Wilkie) has ever won the nomination without being a former office-holder or high-ranking military official (no Democrat has ever done it).  This puts Trump and Carson in a position where they have to prove themselves more fully (Trump does that by leading the pack in polling) or stay on the sidelines.

This isn't fair, though, particularly to the grassroots, and perhaps that is laying bare one of the principle issues the Republican Party has right now: there are a lot of Republicans who simply don't like the party.  The number of Republicans who like the Republican Party has dropped 18-points since January (according to Pew Research), and I suspect it's not a coincidence that 18% is where Donald Trump seems to be averaging in the polls.  Denying the party not only Trump but Huckabee and Carson is probably not the greatest way to make friends, and quite frankly keeping Trump out of the debate would do the RNC way more harm than good since he would make it a campaign issue in a way no other major candidate could.  It's best option, then, is to keep the Top 10 as it is and not try to tweak the system for John Kasich and Lindsey Graham.  Yes, you're going to make powerful men in the party mad, possibly depriving the party of two major voices that it could use right now, but it will be a solid play if it means that Trump makes a fool of himself.  That's the real hope of the RNC with this debate-it doesn't really care who is on stage as long as the media declares Trump the loser (regardless of how it goes, he's the only person whom the media is going to talk about anyway, and who was willing to attack him).  The RNC still has Bush, Rubio, and Walker that can take his place and it's not like Jeb Bush wasn't at an 80% chance of winning the primaries anyway so the hurt feelings of Kasich and Graham are small potatoes when compared to the RNC's goal of Trump imploding.  On the off chance that he actually bats a home run during the debate (a rare, but not impossible situation-if I was his campaign manager I'd realize the lowered expectations and try to get him to do as well as, say, Sarah Palin in the 2008 VP Debates), heaven help us all, but right now this seems like a gambit with decent odds.