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January 3, 2008

The Hot Seat: Should Paul Get Excluded From The Debates?

Today, Captain's Quarters takes its place in the AOL Hot Seat. I decided to ask about the exclusion of Ron Paul from the next Fox News debate -- a strange decision, given the fact that Paul has attended each debate since the beginning, and no votes have yet been taken:

This poll links back to my post from Tuesday, but we certainly can extend that debate to this thread as well. I am no fan of Ron Paul nor of the debate formats used thus far in the campaign. I have written a number of times that all of these debates had too many people on the stage to be effective, and that participation needed to be limited or the debates broken up into smaller events with only two or three participants at a time, on both sides.

After a full year of debate silliness, though, this isn't the time to implement the solution. With Iowa caucusing today and New Hampshire following, why not just say that the top four candidates from the Iowa results would get invited to the New Hampshire debate, or any who won more than 10% in the caucus? Why bother to specifically exclude Paul (and Duncan Hunter) now?

Instead of trying to bring some reason to the debate format, it looked more like Fox News wants to impose its own political sensibilities on the race. Even when those sensibilities agree with mine, I think it irresponsible for media outlets to act in that manner.

BUMP: To top, so I can put the earlier Paul post in below.

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