A stellar field of candidates ready for first GOP debate

How many times have we said we wished for more choices when it came to deciding who would become president?

Welcome to the 2016 sweepstakes. There are more candidates seeking the office than ever before.

If you haven’t been keeping up with them, you will have an opportunity to meet all the Republican contenders when the first round of debates kicks off on Thursday.

Fox News will host the event, and will let us know on Tuesday which 10 of the 16 now in the race for the nomination will face off on the Cleveland stage.

They will be the 10 with the highest popularity ratings as affirmed by five national polling organizations.

Those who don’t make the cut will still have an opportunity to speak prior to the official debate, so they will get some airtime too. You can see it happen right from your easy chair as they meet face to face on prime-time television.

Democrats have been planning on the ascent of Hillary Clinton pretty much from the time of her loss to Barack Obama in 2008, and now they are stuck with her. And that includes all her scandal baggage and lack of any significant achievements that would qualify her for the office.

Yes, I know there is Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who is making her a bit nervous, but his out-in-the-open class-envy agenda of socialism is about to run its course and other potential Democratic contenders aren’t likely to materialize.

So the liberal wing of our country can take a back seat while the Republicans own the spotlight with sterling contenders offering voters choices like never before.

There are eight governors or former governors with records of leadership in their respective states who provide credentials for the kind of president each of them would make.

They all have records of their positions on the prominent issues of this campaign season.

By their service in their states’ highest office we can see if they think we need more government in our lives or if it should be limited in accord with its original design.

All of them have dealt with matters of government-managed healthcare, immigration, abortion, gun rights, the environment, constitutional protection of state powers and whether it’s a good idea to keep piling up the public debt and raising taxes.

The four who currently serve in the U.S. Senate and the one who previously held that office will address all those issues and explain their positions on pending matters of international relations, our nation’s security and whether they will be able to stop President Obama’s deal with Iran from putting the whole world at risk.

The field is rounded out with a prominent physician, a tech industry leader and the unapologetic, plain-talking Donald Trump, who is currently leading the whole field.

If you haven’t already decided whom you will support or if you would like to test your current preference, there’s a way to see which of the candidates best suits your own position on the issues.

Log onto the isidewith.com website and take the quiz. There’s both a quick version of the exercise and an option to dig deeper into the question of which contenders hold beliefs closest to your own.

Then on Thursday you can see how well they meet your expectations. One thing is for sure: You are not stuck with just a couple of choices this time around.

We have a big field of viable candidates with this reality: Any one of them is capable of putting our country back on the right track, and none of them is Hillary Clinton.

Richard Greene is a former Arlington mayor and served as an appointee of President George W. Bush as regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency. mayorgreene@mayorgreene.com

This story was originally published July 31, 2015 at 5:58 PM with the headline "A stellar field of candidates ready for first GOP debate."