First presidential debate puts GOP in a quandary

With the first republican debate of the 2016 presidential election out of the way, the candidates, voters, big-money contributors and political observers will spend the next several days conducting postmortems. And the underlying question the 17 hopefuls for the Republican Party nomination for president and the public will seek to answer is this: Who should stay in the race, and who should get out?

While it is true that the field is the largest in the history of presidential elections, national polls conducted prior to Thursday night’s gabfest in Cleveland showed that only a handful of the candidates had been making inroads with the voters.

The debates – seven candidates at the bottom of the polls participated in an earlier forum, and 10 in the main event – were seen as providing the first sweep of the field.

Of course, each candidate’s campaign will attempt to spin the performance, but the fact remains that with the Iowa caucuses just months away, Republican voters must be given the chance to delve into the candidates’ positions on the major issues of the day, including the economy and jobs, immigration and entitlement reform.

That can’t be done when the stage is packed and each hopeful gets only a limited amount of time to answer questions.

Indeed, in an attempt at fairness, sponsors of such debates strive to treat each candidate the same – even though they aren’t all equal.

Thus, on the main stage two nights ago, the big news had nothing to do with substance, but rather with raw politics. And, to no one’s surprise, business tycoon and political novice Donald Trump grabbed the headlines.

The pledge

At the very start of the debate, all 10 were asked to pledge that they would support the nominee of the party and that they would not consider a third-party candidacy. Trump was the only one who refused.

“I will not make the pledge,” Trump said, adding later, “I am discussing it with everybody, but I’m talking about a lot of leverage. I want to win, and we will win. I want to win as the Republican.”

That elicited this quip from U.S. Sen. Rand Paul: “He’s already hedging his bets because he’s used to buying politicians of all stripes.”

Before the debate, there was a great deal of speculation as to how Trump would be treated by the other nine candidates, in light of some of the personal attacks he aimed at them.

But other than Sen. Paul’s slam, Trump emerged relatively unscathed.

It was clear from the first debates hosted by Fox News that Republicans see President Barack Obama as the spark that will ignite the passions of the GOP. Thus, they will be going after him with a vengeance.

And, they see Hillary Clinton, who has a huge lead in the polls for the Democratic Party nomination, as the candidate who would be easy to defeat because of her service in the Obama administration.

It is to be hoped that as the campaign unfolds, voters will be able to get a clear understanding of the candidates’ positions on the pressing issues of the day.

The 2016 presidential election should be about electing the leader of the most powerful country in the world and not about an audition for a television reality show.