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resedit wrote:

Fox broadcasts to a national audience and therefore needs to have the candidates that national viewers give a flying smurf about.

Bahaha. Faux News indeed. Fox is (supposedly) broadcasting news here, not entertainment. Excluding a candidate because they dont think their audience cares is a completely bullsmurf reason. Fox is supposed to report on politics, not influence them. Fair and Balanced indeed.

bratboy wrote:

resedit wrote:

I can't speak for Fox.

You're not required to "speak for" anyone.  This is a question of judgment and of what should be done, not what is legally required of the network.  It seems like you so often focus on how one might be required to act in a given situation and refuse to stake a position on what should happen.

What should be done is the debate should be limited to four people.

It doesn't take a genius to see what is going on here....

No - it doesn't - Fox is limiting the number of candidates and choosing the ones that the nation as a whole, their viewing audience, wants to hear about.

Glad we cleared that up.

Tallgeese wrote:

Why does "the nation as a whole, their viewing audience" want to hear about a certain 4 candidates?

Too many candidates makes for a bad debate and is rather worthless.

-=-

Do you really think that whether Fox News allows Ron Paul to be in the debate is going to make a smurf of a difference when it comes to him being nominated by the republican party?

The answer is clearly no - so this whole premise of Fox doing this to influence the election is illogical bull smurf.

The premise of this thread is a farce.

Tallgeese wrote:

That didn't answer the question. Why is the nation interested in a specific four candidates?

Because the nation is interested in a good debate that helps them form opinions on the candidates.

I think fox has 5 of them - I think they should only have four. I think no debate should have more than four.

Who said that?

I see....which four, then?  What's your criteria?

The criteria is up to fox, not me.
If I were to choose, I would choose the four my audience was most interested in. Wouldn't you? That's how you get people to watch.

Oh yes, little interest here.

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul made history Sunday by raising $6 million in online contributions in 24 hours, breaking the record for the most money raised by a national candidate in a single day, and potentially putting Paul on track to surpass the fourth quarter fund raising of all of his competitors in both parties.

Of those 58,000 people, almost 25,000 were first-time donors, the campaign says. The 58,000 makes up a base of individuals of 118,000 people who contributed to the Paul campaign in the fourth quarter.

The median donation was $50, Benton says.

"One of the most important things Ron Paul does, which I think is a service to all of us, is to bring back on the table a lot of ideas that the MSM and most candidates treat as off the table," says Zephyr Teachout, a visiting assistant law professor at Duke University who directed internet organizing for Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign.

Link.

There is an amount of civic responsibility that comes with hosting a presidential debate.  It's a shame you can't see that.

Again...were you bothered that Huckabee was included in earlier debates?

bratboy wrote:

Do you even know what that word means?  "Socialism" in comparison to what?

This country is far less "socialist" than any other 'western' nation.

i agree, and i'm not arguing that we're as socialist as other nations...

1. because we're not AS socialist as other nations doesn't mean we shouldn't still scale back
2. why wait until we're AS socialist as other countries to do something about the trend

resedit wrote:

Tallgeese wrote:

That didn't answer the question. Why is the nation interested in a specific four candidates?

Because the nation is interested in a good debate that helps them form opinions on the candidates.

Bunk.

Ron Paul gives them a better debate.

(It also gives Republicans who don't like the war an option for voting.)

resedit wrote:

Is that "civic responsibility" kind of like a "social contract" ??
There is a responsibility to make a debate useful and meaningful.
People have short attention spans - that's a fact. That's why scenes that add quite a bit to a story often get left on the cutting room floor.

As someone with an education in film-making, I disagree that "attention span" is the driving force behind such decisions. 

With too many candidates in a debate, the amount of time a candidate has gets really diluted. You don't have the time for all the candidates to properly point and counterpoint the other viewpoints.

You have to limit the candidates, or the debate is worthless to the vast majority of the people watching. Fox has a "civic" responsibility to have a meaningful debate. Unfortunately that means they can't include everybody until the field has been narrowed.

I'm not suggesting that any and every person needs to be included.  However, this individual in particular should have been included, for the multiple reasons I've offered in this thread.

I did not watch the debates that had too many candidates because they were rather worthless, I could get more information by reading the various candidates PR statements.

Would you have watched them if unpopular and 'uninteresting' candidates that hadn't raised a whole lot of money (like Huckabee) were excluded?

My participation in this thread is not about me not liking the guy, it's about the absurd assertion that he was excluded because he is anti-war. Fox has anti-war guests on all the freakin' time.

His position on the war in but one reason he was excluded, I'm afraid.  This is Fox we're talking about, a network that has unabashedly applied an ideological slant to their business.  Paul is not well-liked in the GOP, unfortunately.

Jaligard wrote:

(It also gives Republicans who don't like the war an option for voting.)

i disagree with his "get out now" approach to iraq, but i agree with most of his foreign policy in regards to military action.

...and i am supporting ron paul.

but you're right, there are quite a few republicans who dislike the war and ron paul is a great choice.  it seems a lot of liberals like ron paul for his stance, as well...but i'm not sure if they know all of the other things he stands for that liberals generally dislike.

bratboy wrote:

As someone with an education in film-making, I disagree that "attention span" is the driving force behind such decisions.

It depends upon the length of the film. But if you ever listen to the comments by directors who have actually made films of long films in the extended DVDs and they explain why certain scenes are cut, very often that's the reason they give.

I'm not suggesting that any and every person needs to be included.  However, this individual in particular should have been included, for the multiple reasons I've offered in this thread.

He could have been included. Whether he should have or not depends upon what audience Fox is trying to meet, which I'm guessing is the national audience they are marketing the debate to. Who would you have excluded?

Would you have watched them if unpopular and 'uninteresting' candidates that hadn't raised a whole lot of money (like Huckabee) were excluded?

If they were not of interest to me, probably not. That's probably why Fox is cutting out the candidates of lesser interest. People like me are their target audience. I'm not watching this one either, to be honest - too many people.

His position on the war in but one reason he was excluded, I'm afraid.  This is Fox we're talking about, a network that has unabashedly applied an ideological slant to their business.  Paul is not well-liked in the GOP, unfortunately.

His position on the war is a reason being imagined by those who already have a bias against Fox news. They have plenty of guests who are against the war, they even offered to have a Democrat debate - which certainly would have included guests against the war, but that fell through due to the Dems deciding not to (for some valid reasons, Fox did screw up with their reporting of Obama and the Islam school).

Paul is not well-liked in the GOP. That is true. He doesn't have a shot in hell at getting the GOP nomination. What purpose then does it serve the GOP  voting public who is deciding what candidate they want to have him in the debate? To feel warm and fuzzy?

Or are you upset because you wanted him to have the opportunity to slam the other candidates over the war?

The debates are to help a party decide who they want to put on their ticket, not for the amusement of people outside the party.