Thanks for your reply and I hope you are doing good today.

It is a real shame that things turned south so quickly, Wednesday night, with all the shouted arguments. I guess that in theory at least, we would hope that it should be possible to prevent this kind of free for all cat fighting, but in practice its hard. Some TV personalities were saying on Thursday that the whole format ought to be replaced by some sort of virtual chat, and make it such that the candidates are electronically prevented from talking out of turn. While we’re at it, I believe that control of the mics – TRULY enforced control – would be another way.

Also maybe keep out petty people like Tim Scott who not only won’t let go and let the other person reply, but also harp on completely silly issues like whether someone had expensive curtains or not. That was maybe the silliest moment of the whole debate – are we really deciding the leader of the free world based on whether or not they keep expensive curtains in their office?

Nikki herself is also a little too forceful, I agree and its discouraging that she equates pushiness with leadership. It’s a shame because otherwise she seems very smart...

I think that I would supplement your list of acceptables - I agree that DiSantis is very good, but I would add in Burgum, Christie, Pence and Vivek. I agree that Christie has at times seemed a little too anti Trump, but to my mind he recovered his poise a bit on Wednesday night and sounded like he would be a good man to be in office. In the end, we are all human and maybe Christie is a little angrier than others about the "Trump Wars" because he's also a native of the tri-state area, and he thinks that Trump has cast the whole region into a bad light by being a little over the top in his manners, etc.

After his "Wednesday calming" I can accept Christie as POTUS at the point. In addition, Burgum and Pence are slightly boring, but I think they have the know-how and experience. Vivek – I believe – was not the instigator in the cat fights he got embroiled in, and I would definitely take a chance on him being president, as I think he’s a very very dynamic and intelligent type.

Yes, I think including the Univision person was not much more than a way for FOX to make more money from the contract, rather than a way to make a better debate. When the whole thing is run by a reasonable network like FOX as opposed to MSNBC or something then one would hope for a good sensible set of questions. FOX chose to gobble some money from Univision, I think…

FOX also failed in several questions. Let me paraphrase “Which of your fellow candidates do you think does not belong here on the stage?” This is unbelievable: we already have contention left right and center and then they ask the candidates for more bad blood? Unbelievably poor question from FOX. Again, is this a scheme to “add spice” and hence add viewers and revenue? I would expect nonsense like this from MSNBC, but not FOX.

Also the WAY you ask a question makes a difference. Asking (paraphrase) “How do you expect to catch up with Trump’s huge lead?” is also poor.

Such a question is slightly disrespectful to the candidates and tantamount to asking “Why are you even here, given than you’re so far behind Trump in the polls?”

It is, at least, a poor question to be given at the beginning, when not one primary or caucus has been held.

The question seems to imply a prejudgement ahead of what the voters will say. Leads change in primaries and they can change dramatically. The moderators seem to fail to account for this basic fact.

What they should have said, which would have been a lot more respectful to the candidates and to the presidential process would be: “Are you worried about the large lead Trump currently has in the polls?”

The FOX people seemed to be out to make money at the expense of quality, out to create cat fights, and out to insult the dignity of the candidates and the voters.

Of course, I'm grateful that they did broadcast this, but I do have my nits to pick! ha ha

Thanks for listening.

Doug