[Jokelahoma]

No, thank you. I'm happy with what they chose, and I'm not questioning it. If you would choose to allow anyone who paid their $35K to participate, it's you who needs to find reasonable criteria for paring the field, not me.

And the schedule means a lot. If they don't have the debate scheduled (or this year, the primary itself) it's rather hard to determine what other primary within which a candidate must finish in the top five, since you don't know what primary will immediately precede yours. Plus, it matters because that's the question you asked.

[Little_GTO]

Come on, put on your thinking cap. It’s not that hard.