Thursday Hillary Bash - Kinda, but mostly GOP primaries

It takes a village idiot.

The Republican debates are approaching quickly and I for one am looking forward to them.  There's a pretty deep field, unlike the Democrats, where Hillary Clinton may end up having to debate herself. Trust me there are enough inconsistencies in her positions that she could probably pull that off (and the press would declare both sides the winner and a better choice than the GOP candidate). But let's set that discussion aside for another time. What's interesting in the GOP debates is that there are more candidates than there are slots available on a stage.  Choosing how to include/exclude participants is topic enough for its own debate.  That discussion has been vigorously taken up in several quarters already, so I'm not going to rehash the options and pros and cons here.

What I will suggest is that the importance of getting the field whittled down to a more manageable level is important for the GOP, as the needs to be anything but chaotic.  But it is also important to have the opportunity for vigorous debate and a substantive discovery process.  Whittling a field of 16 down to 7 or so, must be done in a way that ensures the right (best) 7 are the ones left standing. Having the process over too early only helps the Democrats' (i.e. Hillary's) chances of re-taking the White House in 2016.

And we really don't need that.