Yeah, I get that, but at the same time, you have to draw a line somewhere. If there are dozens of jokers onstage, nobody could get more than a few minutes of time, and that wouldn’t do the voters any good either.
Ten people seems like a sensible number to me. Though Santorum does have a point that national polls probably aren’t the best way to judge viability.
Even with only 10 on the debate stage, they would be hard pressed to get more than about 6 minutes of speaking time for the evening.
Considering the lengthy editoralized questions asked by the moderators, plus 1 minute opening and 1 minute closing statements, that would eat up roughly half of the time. So, in a 90 minute debate, they would have only about 45 minutes of response time, divided by 10 participants would be 4.5 minutes total for each.
Of course, the mods will try to sneak in several ‘raise your hands if ...’ and short answer ‘yes or no’ questions.