By

Randy Evans

Officially, the first contest for the 2016 presidential campaign will be the Iowa caucuses currently scheduled for February 2016 to be followed by New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina.  Yet for Republicans, the reality of the 2016 nomination process is that the first contest will actually occur in early August 2015.

In August 2015, FOX will host the first RNC-sanctioned debate in Cleveland, Ohio. It will be held in connection with the Summer Republican National Committee meeting.  And while there will be many GOP presidential candidates, not all can take the stage.

Neither FOX nor viewers want to see 15 or more candidates line up on a stage to talk for an allocated share of just a couple of minutes.  And so, the first cut gets made — months before the first caucus or primary.

Although no decisions have yet been made, the number of spots on the stage will likely be limited to somewhere between seven and 10.  For the other 10 or more candidates, this could be the end of their short-lived bid to become the next President of the United States.

No one can overestimate the value of a spot on the stage at the RNC-sanctioned debates, especially when so few (in comparison to the 23 in 2012) will occur.  So far, only nine have been sanctioned with maybe three more if the nomination process goes long.

As former Speaker Newt Gingrich proved in 2012, one hour of earned media on the stage with the other GOP presidential hopefuls is incalculable.  Not making the stage could be for all practical purposes politically fatal.

The criteria for deciding who makes the stage has yet to be decided. In fact, who decides the criteria has not even been decided.  Given the potential repercussions of leaving candidates off the stage, the issue has become a sort of political hot potato.

Letting networks decide could be risky. After all, networks have completely different interests than political parties and presidential campaigns in deciding who gets to compete.  Networks want the big names while candidates want their shot.

Not surprisingly, the RNC has not been overly eager to own the formula for who gets on the stage.  When those kinds of decisions get made, a few candidates are happy while many more are not. Meanwhile, grassroots supporters start to question whether the party is trying to decide the nominee.

But, the real impediment has been the difficulty in formulating criteria that most would accept as fair and impartial. For example, some suggest that national polling numbers should either decide the spots or at least be a major factor.  But, as history confirms, mid-August snapshot popularity contests do not always reflect the strength of the candidate or the campaign.

In addition, national polling ignores the very nature of how the nomination process actually begins. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats hold a national mini-primary to start their nomination process. Instead, both begin with a single state — Iowa — which forces candidates to get down to campaigning on a local level, person by person.  A pre-Iowa culling of candidates based on national polling would seem to undercut the process.

In years past, the Ames (Iowa) Straw poll (really just a glorified fundraiser according to most candidates) offered some guidance. But the August GOP debate (and the decision of who makes the cut for the stage), will render that event largely moot.

Republicans could opt for some blended polling factoring in national polls, local polls in the early states, and some other criteria aimed at measuring candidate and campaign strength.  Front end loaded campaigns focused on the early states could then have a shot.  But deciding and then weighing all of those factors would be complicated.

Of course, every candidate competing for one of those debate slots is eager to know now what the formula will be so that they can shape their campaign strategies accordingly.  The net effect is that the pressure is on for someone — either FOX, the RNC, or both — to let everyone else know what the deal will be.  After all, the first RNC-sanctioned debate is just four months away.

And so, the predicament for FOX and the RNC lurks in the background.  As candidates continue to make their presidential campaigns official through the spring and summer, watch for the pressure to mount regarding exactly who makes the debate stage and how that decision gets made.

It is a dynamic like no other in electoral history.  It can and likely will influence significantly the entire GOP nomination process and it is just four months away.  And so the pressure mounts.

Make no mistake, the decision of who is on the stage and who gets left behind is, for all practical purposes, the defacto first GOP presidential primary of the 2016 election cycle.

Randy Evans is an attorney and columnist.