Republican debate gets huge audience — will that help the party’s image?

By Michael Barone

Published August 7, 2015 5:59pm ET

Republican debate gets huge audience — will that help the party’s image? — Republican presidential candidates from left, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Scott Walker, Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and John Kasich take the stage for the first Republican presidential debate at the Quicken Loans Arena Thursday, Aug. 6, 2015, in Cleveland. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) | Andrew Harnik

Last night’s Republican prime time debate on Fox News attracted a huge audience. According to Nielsen’s overnight rating, as reported on Slate, its rating was 16.0, indicating a viewership of 23 million viewers. That’s the same as the rating for the National Basketball Association finals, almost three times the rating for the most-watched 2012 Republican debate and about 60 percent as high as the first Obama-Romney debate in the fall.