The Republican Candidates’ Seven-Car Pileup

I don’t think last night’s Republican presidential-primary debate on Fox News was poorly run. But multi-candidate primary-debate organizers face a persistent structural problem. If you ask every candidate to weigh in on the same topic, you often end up with seven candidates giving more or less the same answer — “I’m determined to secure the border.” “When I’m president, America will have a secure border.” “Everybody says they’re going to secure the border, but I’m the one you can count on to do it.” There are exceptions, but by and large, all Republican candidates want to do roughly the same things, and just have slightly different ideas of how to do it. Even if they have differences in the details, it’s not easy to explain those details in 60 seconds.