Republican Party presidential debates, October 28, 2015 – Boulder, Colorado
Republican Party presidential debates, October 28, 2015 – Boulder, Colorado
The third debate was held on October 28 at the University of Colorado in Boulder, which is also one of the sponsors. CNBC stated that the debate would focus on the economy. The moderators were announced as John Harwood, Carl Quintanilla, and Becky Quick, with additional questions to be asked by Rick Santelli, Sharon Epperson, and Jim Cramer. On September 30, CNBC announced that all candidates with an average of 2.5 percent or better in polls conducted by NBC, Fox, CNN, ABC, CBS, and Bloomberg released in the five weeks (from September 17th through October 21st inclusive) before the October 28th debate would be invited to participate in the primetime debate at 8 p.m. EDT. All other candidates receiving at least 1 percent in any one of the polls conducted by the six recognized firms would be invited to the undercard debate at 6 p.m. EDT.
In response to the previous debate on CNN running over three hours in length, the top two highest-polling candidates – Donald Trump and Ben Carson – teamed up in a threatened boycott of the CNBC debate. They demanded that the debate be limited to no longer than two hours, and also that opening and closing statements be included in those two hours; otherwise, if these conditions were not met, both Trump and Carson would withdraw from the debate. On October 16, CNBC announced that it had accepted the demands of Trump and Carson, setting the two-hour maximum and allowing for opening and closing statements.
On October 21, CNBC announced that 10 candidates (Bush, Carson, Christie, Cruz, Fiorina, Huckabee, Kasich, Paul, Rubio and Trump) would take the stage shortly after 8 p.m. EDT, with four candidates (Graham, Jindal, Santorum, and Pataki) on stage about two hours earlier.Whether Jindal would participate was unclear; he said on October 20 that he might skip the debate if the criteria for the main group was not changed. On October 27, Jindal's press secretary said he would participate: "We just thought about it and he's always been ready to debate at any time."
The primetime debate was prominent for featuring numerous clashes between the candidates and the moderators, with the moderators being heavily criticized for asking loaded questions, some of which contained false facts that were refuted by the candidates. Cruz, Rubio, Christie, Huckabee, Trump, and Carson all criticized the moderators at some point or another, and often received the loudest applause as a result.
The winners of the primetime debate were all widely held to be Rubio, Cruz, and Christie, primarily for their attacks on the media as well as the substance of their statements. The two front-runners in the polls at the time, Trump and Carson, noticeably did not receive as much focus nor had as many memorable moments, but were still viewed as doing fairly well. Bush and Kasich were largely criticized for their performances, particularly when the former clashed with Rubio over Rubio’s record as a Senator, and when the latter clashed with Trump over Kasich’s record as Governor, and his sudden shift in debate strategy from passive to aggressive, which Trump claimed was simply being done in response to his failing poll numbers.
Source: Wikipedia
Republican Party presidential debates, October 28, 2015 – Boulder, Colorado
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