[ ♪♪ ] too many debates, too many candidates, and in the end a compromise nominee. looking back at the 2012 presidential race, republicans said "we are not going to do that again." fast-forward to 2015 - depending on the day, there's almost 20 prepared, declared or rumoured candidates. the crowded field - how it helps or hinders a party. that's

tonight's "inside story". welcome to "inside story," i'm ray suarez. the race for the white house is officially on, even though it's 18 months until election. pundits and pros like to say the g.o.p. had a deep bench, lots of charismatic politicians from different wings, ready to make a plausible run. the thing about a deep bench is no one imagines every player will take the field all at once. does a party that lost the popular vote believe everybody into the pool, it's going to pick a winger. we'll start with "al jazeera america"s david shuster. >> reporter: in the early voting nomination states of iowa and new hampshire, it's easy to find republican presidential candidates. never find these six who have formally declared.

five more are expected to jump in soon. >> if you are looking for washington for help. you'll have nothing but despair and despondency. all the republicans share a few things in common, rhetoric about president obama has been haverng haverng. >> they have shown a disdain for hillary clinton. something too. i'm running for president. >> our founders never intended us to a have professional political class. >> the major republican candidates are trying to set themselves apart from each other. kentucky senator rand paul is a libertarian who wants to end the war on marijuana, and making penalties less severe. unlike most republican candidates, former arkansas governor mike huckabee is defending security.

>> if congress wants to take away someone's retirement. let them take their congressional entitles, not your social security. >> reporter: texas ted cruz believes in executive power. >> on the first day i intend to rescind every illegal and unconstitutional illegal action place. and florida your senator marco rubio is the youngest candidate and the son of cuban immigrants. >> i live in a country where the son of a bar tender and a maid can have the same dreams and future as hose that came from privilege former hp c.e.o. has thrown her hat in the ring, and dr cameron. >> affordable care act is the worst thing that happened in that nation. jed bush was expected to announce his candidacy, he'll

enter as the front runner. analysts say jed bush is on target to raise more money than any candidate in u.s. history. he could be vulnerable in the conservative primaries thanks to moderate views on education and immigration reform. >> we should give them a path to legal status, where they work, don't receive government benefits he has been urged to run. lindsay graham, considered a foreign policy expert has been urged to run by closest friend senator john mccain, the 2008 republican nominee. former senator rick santorum won the iowa caucuses and has been hawkish about strands of islam. >> if i.s.i.s. want to establish a 7th century cal fate, let's oblime them by bombing them back

to the 7th century. >> and chris christie is the best at one on one retail politics, but at teems he's been overshadowed by his temper. as evidenced by a heckler. >> sit down and shut up. >> joining me now from new york is al jazeera's david shuster. sit down, but do not shut up. isn't this what the party said after the 2012 race, it wanted to avoid. a huge and possibly well-funded field that could go deep into the primary season. >> that's the issue. we hear a number of republican officials, there's nothing we can do about it. so many looked up and saw what president obama did. maybe i can catch lightening in a bottle. maybe i could be like hillary clinton and get exposure, and a great job. maybe i can be like mike huckabee, in 2008. he came in third.

even losing has its advantages, and the biggest challenge is how will they speak about how to manage the debate. what is the cut off. they say you can't have 16-20 candidates and have it make sense. >> that's a serious problem. they can't have 16 candidates. telling someone they can't come is not as easy as all that. >> that's right. >> there's so many ways to measure this. you'd get a set of numbers. who was the best national organization. rand paul is at the top. you can go buy who has the most amount of money. the matrix are different, and they'll fear the party saying each one is crucial in terms of a long-term campaign. it will not be easy to solve. if we think about the ideological

continuum. are a lot of them crowded into one part of the lanes that might lead to a nomination? >> it's fair to say. ohio governor john casic, very much part of the establishment. he may get in. he could occupy the same space as jed bush or george pataki, another new york governor, or possibly we talked about, for example, rick perry. there's a slew of conservative but established candidates, and the ones fighting with each other, and that is folks like fed cruz, perhaps marco rubio, and senator rand paul. and then, of course, we have the evangelical vote. mike huckabee, and rick santorum. they start to slice the pie. that's where you get the sense that someone with a lot of money, something of establishment support and has a

lot of money, they may be in the best shape to go the distance. >> the way the primaries are structured, are there candidates that can get a handful of votes, but pick up delegates as they lose individual contests? >> yes, the best champ of that is mike huckabee, someone that does well in iowa, not so well in new hampshire, and is able to use the base or whatever is left on super-tuesday, to pick off more and more. the key will be money, who has the money to advertise, even if contest. >> that's david shuster, great to talk to you. >> thank you. >> some of the republicans in the race will likely never be president. next - we'll ask g.o.p. insiders how the party feels about an enormous group of contenders, and whether some should bow out

of the race for the good of the party. it's "inside story". >> monday. the fastest internet in the country. >> it's the next generation internet. >> but why isn't it in your town? >> our internet's half the speed of dial-up. >> could big cable be controlling your access to the web? >> it's not even gonna play. >> your right to access knowledge is being limited. >> techknow's team of experts show you how the miracles of science... >> i'm standing in a tropical wind storm. >> can affect and surprise us. >> wow! some of these are amazing. >> "techknow", where technology meets humanity. monday, 6:30 eastern. only on al jazeera america.

there are 16 - count them - 16 declared rumoured or all but declared candidates for the republican nomination for premiership in 2016. for a party trying to recapture the white house after the best years of president obama, candidate. rick gallagher and a former spokesman, bruce hayne is a strategist and served as a media consultant to the national committee 2008 u.s. presidential campaign. nominee? >> it's the way it will be this

time. it's a crowded field, but it's a good time to be a republican. when you look at what the field was in 2012, it's like moving off the used car lot to the used car lot. there are a lot of candidates. there's 6 or 7 people you can see being president in the field. their senators with terrific records, new and different candidates, people who are new to the presidential field. it's a good field for the republicans, and we'll find someone that can run and win. >> same question, rich. >> as you pointed out when talking to david shuster, this is a long way between now and iowa, 8-9 months before the first, much less new hampshire, south carolina, and not everyone will stay in that long. money runs out. people tire, and they realise

they'll not make a department. they'll trickle out by august, the straw poll. by the time we get to the end of the year 2015 and move to the even number year, that the field will be down to probably the five or six people that have a legitimate shot and should have. >> the point you make makes a lot of sense. >> if we look back at 2012, let's look at the boss, who because he has financial backing was able to play deep into the primaries. rick santorium dropped out. won twice the delegates than gingrich, but he was able to stay in the race.

>> there's a guy in california that dislikes jed bush that he's willing to put up unprecedented amounts of money to keep marco rubio in the race. it could alter the race. at some point the big donors say "i'm a business map, this is not going anywhere", thank you for playing, you need to go home. >> last time around, people looked at the gates schedule. the combination of a large field and the debates schedule saying this is too much, let's not do this. scheduled for 2015 is a series of debates all over the country. the candidates will burn up the frequent flyer miles. that's already on the calendar as we speak in may 2015, and there'll be many more because we'll be deep into the primary season after the new hampshire

in the beginning of february. what can you do about an enormous field that takes the spotlight off these people that you talk about, the five, six, seven plausible nominee? >> it's part of the challenge running for president. you have to find a way to step forward, stand out from the crowd, and rise above the folks in the race primarily to get speech contracts and sell books. for the top tier candidates, people like marco rubio, like jeb bush, scott walker, ted walker - this is their chance to shine and show political fields. they can step out, take control. one of the ways he was able to stay in was that debate in south carolina. he took control of the debate. stood out, won the primary, and

able to sustain the campaign for months beyond the cause of that. mitt romney had an opportunity to score a knockout punch and close down the primary, he didn't do it. he extended it and showed what sort of candidate he would be. >> as a practical matter can you tell people they can't be on the stage. you heard the names. can you tell ben carson he's not in the debate. >> sure. depend on the rules, whether you win a lawsuit. the other opportunities is to have a lacy susan, it's not right. one of the things that the debates do. is they are a part of the process. remember, tim pol, nte. he said he would do something and asked would you repeat that on stage, and he couldn't bring himself to do it. the campaign was over.

rick perry, when he couldn't education. >> it's part of the process. for most of us, it's what we do, it's fun to watch. them figure it out. >> sure, some people melt under the spotlight. there are some people who make sa slash that they couldn't make any other way, giving them oxygen to continue, even though, if we spoke privately, instead of with cameras, we'd whisper president. >> and that will be part of the fun, debates are part of the process. it's a way to explore what kind of president that these people would be. another way is we see them. it's wonderful in states like new hampshire. contact. they'll met people in the living rooms. they'll be exposed to a lot of television advertising that hopefully communicates what it can, and what the priorities would be. they'll have some things to say

about how they think the others in the field would govern. there'll be a lot of information besides debates. they'll come in and give voters a chance to sort these people. it will be a strength for some, a weakness for others. for a lot of voters, presence on television, how you command the stage, it tells people about what sort of leader you'll be. been that way since john f kennedy. nothing will change. you can make an argument we want to see the people in the arena and see how they act. and those that get through the early process, the early stages, once you get into march and april, and even may, where these primaries tumble over each other, three, four, five on the same day, one three days after the one, it's not just the amount of money, but whether you can organise, manage a campaign, let your people do the things you can do.

not everyone has the skill, a skill you have to have if you are going to be president of the united states let's talk a wee bit about the issues instead of politics. is the difference between the primary electorate and the general - in the case of the republican party particularly, something - does that make it something of an obstacle course on issues like immigration, or the future of gay marriage, and/or the republican field are against it. >> gay marriage may be settled by the supreme court. you make a good point. you have to run to the edge whether you are a left, as a democrat, or the right as a republican, and try to get back possible. they are the days before google. you can't do that any more. you can't say one thing in alabama and another in massachusetts. the electorate is smarter than we give them credit for. when it comes to the

crunch, to republicans picking a nominee after getting through the process that we've been discussing, you know, who is the cutest girl at the prom. what it comes down to is who can beat helicopter, and who republicans believe can do that, as a result of other things that we talked about, that'll be the most important thuning. >> we'd like to talk about the issue of the day. if it's day marriage, if it's the latest battle before the supreme court. there'll be two big things that the republican primary voters care about. that is what kind of security president will you be op foreign policy, how will you get the economy moving stimulate investment, sustain jobs. people will vote with safety in the pocket book. they'll be important to different parts of the

republican coalition, and it takes a big coalition to go all the way through the different states, long marathon run and put together the group of voters and turp them out. >> great to talk to you both. i hope i can call on you again as the race ripens vanity candidates and election candidates is that a luxury that the white house can reform. does a crowded field deliver a tougher, tested nominee to trail. is history even a guide?

welcome back to "inside story". 2016 is a presidential year when there will not be an incumbent. on the democratic side there's a

huge name, hillary clinton, on the republican may be former florida governor jed bush, but he doesn't seem to scare anyone enough to stay out of the race. a campaign management teacher from new york university and political science and joins us now. professor, i don't think i can remember a field with 16 candidate in it. have there been any? >> you know, not for a long time. this is an absolutely, as you were talking about, crowded field. it is a snap field in terms of poll numbers. in my mind it's a field that looks like the democrats in the early 1970s, 1972 and 1976. those are times you had a crowded field in the democratic side. the top tier candidates not as crowded as this. what happened in both of those

cases will be the establishment, or didn't win a nomination. that's a sign of a party struggling to find out would it is, how it will be presented to the american public. it's a sign of a party that is not as healthy as it should be. that is a negative aspect of this crowded field. as you mentioned before. there's positive aspects. the establishment lost control of the process, and they've been inundated by candidate. >> let show the people at home field. >> this is a result, a poll of polls, if you will. it has jed bush at 15.5%. marco rubio nipping at the heels at 14.3. governor walker right behind them at 12.3%. and rand paul. ted cruz and mike huckabee not too far behind.

jed bush, for his formidable organization, and ties, doesn't seem to be healed and shoulders above the field at all. >> you are right. it's an example of what we mean by a flat field. >> what happens in a flat field is people you never expect to mount a campaign is able to do so, and means that the leading candidate doesn't have to appeal to many members of the party. someone like jed bush benefits to a certain amount to the flat field not because he thought conservatives on the right, breaking up the base and vying for support. if he's able to win a small number of the remaining moderates in the party, he can take this nomination, of course, a draw back will be he can be beat up by the end of the

process. depending if the conservatives stay in the race, and if they feel they can make a go of it like south carolina, and push ahead. this is a good sign for jed bush, and depending what happens, he could feel the effects of this going forward. does the money and how people are raising money mean there could be a big plausible field late in the game? >> yes, i'll happy you mentioned mark. obviously we are, you know, in the first real campaign. in 2012 we had an incumbent president. the first real campaign in which we have citizens united. we have unrestricted fundraising. big, bike money. it's what is going on, because what is happening is that those big money donors essentially

took the power away from the party establishment. they are controlling. if you are a scott walker and the koch brother say "if you run, we'll support you", that's a big incentive to run in this time in american history. i think the big question mark will be how does that unrestricted money play, and will the parties be frustrated by the fact that they are losing control of the product. i think that that is probably a - what is happening here. the party establishment is giving power over to the big money, and, of course, you can say there are arguments to be made for that, but i have to say i think it's a bad sign for american politics when the parties lose control. a teacher of campaign management at n.y.u. and political science. thank you for being with us. >> i'll have final thoughts about g.o.p.

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is demography destiny? a new study from the pew

research center finds christians an overwhelming majority of americans are a shrinking part of the population, a fastest portion has no religious demography. the average person is 56. every survey finds more and more people below 36 are abandoning religion, if they had one. white christian conservatives are a cornerstone of republicans success over 35 years. when republicans search for success in the 2020, and 2030, it may be a less reliable approach to insist the u.s. was founded by god, is a christian nation or could use the bible as a governing document. future voters may be asked to share view on how to govern a pleuritic america, rather than on how the world came to be and whether god makes our laws. i'm ray suarez, thank you for

joining us for "inside story". [ ♪♪ ] on "america tonight" - getting schooled. >> now i owe over $33,000 in loans i never signed for, or know where they came from. i could have gone to a real university and had a real degree, and i have nothing to show for it now for-profit colleges - who gets stuck paying the price, a lesson in multiplying debt and why students say it's an education that doesn't add up. also tonight