Republicans debate the value of debates without Trump as he dominates race

Former President Donald Trump’s decision to forgo all three GOP debates in the 2024 primary cycle, coupled with complaints that his rivals aren’t making a dent into his sizable lead, is sparking questions about the relevance of the Republican National Committee-sanctioned debates.

After skipping the first two debates and claiming he wouldn’t participate in the Nov. 8 debate in Miami, Trump’s campaign ratcheted up their influence on the RNC this week when they called for the third debate to be scrapped. “The Republican National Committee should immediately cancel the upcoming debate in Miami and end all future debates in order to refocus its manpower and money on preventing Democrats’ efforts to steal the 2024 election,” senior advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita wrote in a statement on Monday.

JIM JORDAN REVEALS WHAT THE HOUSE WOULD LOOK LIKE WITH HIM AS SPEAKER

The Trump campaign isn’t the only team raising ire with the RNC. Both former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy have complained about the handling of the debate process when the RNC blocked a joint appearance the two were set to hold with Fox News host Bret Baier on Tuesday. Other rivals have called for higher eligibility criteria for future debates to winnow the field onstage. The RNC requires candidates to obtain 4% support in two national polls or 4% in one national poll and two early nominating stages while also requiring a 70,000 donor threshold from 200 donors in at least 20 states.

“Last week’s RNC debate was a disgrace, and I’m starting to believe that was by design. This is what a brokered and rigged nomination process looks like,” Ramaswamy said about the second debate in Simi Valley, California. “Instead of allowing open dialogue and the airing of ideas to give primary voters a real choice, the Establishment would rather cut backroom deals and offer up phony debates, including candidates with no viable path and questions that no voter would ever ask. The Establishment was hellbent on taking down Trump. Now they’re hellbent on propping up their favored puppets. We won’t let them get away with it.”

The second debate was widely panned for the chaotic moments, which featured the candidates repeatedly talking over one another, interrupting the debate moderators, and generally not convincing viewers that Trump could be dethroned from his perch atop the GOP.

Several RNC committeemen and women even slammed the previous Trump-less debates in comments to Politico. “I think the only way you salvage it is if you get the front-runner there,” said Tyler Bowyer, a national RNC committeeman from Arizona.

Trump’s absence on the debate stage was directly addressed by rivals as well. But the RNC doesn’t appear likely to kowtow to the public pressure.

“The same candidates complaining about the rules governing RNC debates all signed a pledge and agreed months ago to not participate in unsanctioned debates,” an RNC spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. “The RNC will continue to enact a fair, transparent debate process, and we will not give in to pressure from individuals seeking to change the rules to favor their candidacy.”

The RNC maintains that Trump is welcome to participate in future debates, but it isn’t actively courting him. The group also placed some blame on the networks that pay for the debate and have editorial control over the rules and formats of the debate. Concerning election interference claims from Trump’s campaign, the RNC pointed to the 100 election integrity lawsuits across the country it engaged with during the 2022 cycle and the 59 election integrity lawsuits in 16 states it is currently involved with. The RNC also launched Bank Your Vote, a nationwide initiative to increase early voting among voters, ahead of the 2024 elections.

Yet, there are some Republican leaders and experts who said that continuing GOP debates is of importance to the nomination process. “The debates are very informative and give people a chance to possibly change their mind, and there’s just a lot that’s going to happen between now and then. So why make that decision now?” said Sammy Baker, chairman of the Gwinnett County Republican Party in Georgia, a crucial battleground state.

Similarly, David Greenberg, a professor of history and journalism at Rutgers University and author of Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency, argued against the RNC bowing to pressure to end future debates.

“There’s no reason to cancel the debates. Roughly half the Republican electorate seems disinclined to back Trump. For them alone, having a chance to compare the other candidates on the same stage is a service,” Greenberg said.

Trump currently leads the primary at 57.9% according to a RealClearPolitics poll average, more than 45 percentage points above Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), his closest competitor, at 12.5%. None of the other rivals polls in the double digits. DeSantis and other candidates, including former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, have argued that despite Trump’s dominance, there is still a sizable portion of Republicans who don’t want the former president as the next standard-bearer.

“In the early states, where voters are learning a lot more about the alternatives, Trump is hovering around 40%. That means close to 60% of Republican caucus/primary voters are actively looking for someone else to support,” wrote Haley campaign manager Betsy Ankney in a memo last month. “Beyond that, the number of voters who are ONLY considering voting for Trump is around 25%. He has a strong grip on that 25%, but if any other incumbent were staring down those numbers, they would be rightly nervous.”

Haley is likely the only candidate to have seen a consistent rise in polling after the first two debates, but her increase hasn’t meaningfully cut into Trump’s lead. A Morning Consult poll showed Trump’s support rising after the second debate, which he skipped, with 63% of potential Republican primary voters supporting Trump, a 5 percentage point increase from the 58% who backed Trump ahead of the latest primary debate.

But conventional wisdom cautions against declaring winners solely off of polls. “There’s another important reason to hold the debates. We should not give the impression that we are slaves to polling data,” Greenberg added. “Debates have become a regular ritual of our mass-media democracy. That’s true regardless of what polls say about any candidate. And while I think most of us expect that Trump will get the nomination, no one can predict the future.”

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Baker, the Georgia Republican, suggested that for future debates, moderators should be quicker to enforce speaking rules against candidates. “I think you got to have a commentator that makes it very clear that that’s not going to happen. And they go ahead and turn the mic off,” he said. “That will clean things up really quickly.”

He also cautioned that Trump winning the nomination isn’t guaranteed. “It’s like anything else in a football game. You can call the game in the third quarter. But how many times does a team come back and win? Especially in basketball. They can be down by 30 and they win the game,” Baker said. “So you can’t count something out until you follow the rules, how the game has been explained for people to win.”