The first Republican primary debate will be on August 23, fewer than 12 weeks away. Will former President Donald Trump play ball and mix it up with a growing number of challengers? Could the debates undermine his formidable lead?
The Republican National Committee has just announced the criteria candidates will have to meet in order to participate. For some, appearing on the debate stage will be their first chance to speak to a national audience, for free.
The stakes are high, especially when the front-runner seems to be running away with the race. If you’re a Republican vying for the presidency in 2024, it’s hard to draw breath; Trump, as ever, is sucking all the oxygen out of the room.
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The debates, consequently, loom large. The first will take place in Milwaukee and be broadcast by Fox News. The second will be staged at the Reagan Presidential Library in California; it has not been announced which network will broadcast that forum.
To appear alongside their rivals in these slugfests, candidates must meet various polling and money-raising targets, such as polling at a minimum of 1% in three nationwide non-affiliated polls and taking in donations from at least 40,000 unique supporters. Those hurdles should be relatively easy for most of the folks in the race today.
More problematic: candidates will also have to sign a loyalty pledge, vowing to support the eventual nominee. Would Chris Christie agree to support candidate Donald Trump? Would Trump agree to back anyone at all? He refused to make that commitment in 2016. Will he be more accommodating now?
More important to the entire undertaking, what if Trump, who is leading by a wide margin, decides not to participate? In late April, he said that no one had obtained his approval before scheduling the debates.
Moreover, he asked, "When you’re leading by seemingly insurmountable numbers, and you have hostile Networks with angry, TRUMP & MAGA hating anchors asking the ‘questions,’ why subject yourself to being libeled and abused?"
From Trump’s perspective, it’s a reasonable question; what’s the upside?
Trump’s appearances so far in the campaign have been largely before friendly audiences, including the CNN town hall moderated by Kaitlan Collins; that’s where he’s at his best.
Meanwhile, Trump’s debate history is checkered. Some (including myself) argue that he lost his 2020 presidential bid by torching the first presidential debate against Joe Biden. I have been told that his coaches (including Chris Christie) pushed him to get aggressive with Biden, hoping that he could draw an angry outburst from the former vice president, which might have cemented the view that he was too old to run and undermined his "nice guy" image.
It was a disaster. Instead of boasting of his many accomplishments as president, Trump showed himself antagonistic, humorless and unlikeable.
On the other hand, during the 12(!!) primary debates, Trump was able to translate his TV-era notoriety into an ever-stronger candidacy. He was sharp, combative and on top of the issues. Can he do that again?
At present, Trump has everything to lose and little to gain. After all, he would be facing off against a slew of very capable candidates, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former U.S. ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramasamy and South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott.
Also, Trump may (probably correctly) reckon that he personally would be the biggest draw for audiences and wonder why he should deliver millions of viewers to his opponents.
These are reasonable concerns, except for this: his lead is not necessarily "insurmountable," and voters won’t like his refusal to participate.
Today, Trump has about a 30-point lead over DeSantis, No. 2 in the race. But while that gap had been widening, it has recently narrowed as the Florida governor has taken to the campaign trail.
Polls fluctuate; circumstances can change, missteps occur. Trump engaging in juvenile name-calling against his rival and suggesting (falsely) that DeSantis did a worse job managing the pandemic than disgraced New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo are not winning tactics.
Meanwhile, DeSantis is not the only GOP hopeful spending time in the early primary states. The GOP bench is deep; any one of several attractive candidates could suddenly challenge Trump’s lead.
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And, voters want debates. A survey last month showed a whopping 79% of Democrats who voted for Biden want the DNC to hold primary debates; at present, there are no debates planned which is customary when an incumbent is running. A similar number of Trump voters also want the candidates to confront each other.
Doing well early on is no guarantee of the nomination. Remember that in 2020. Current Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders led the Democrat Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary; Joe Biden placed a distant fourth and fifth, respectively.
It was in South Carolina that Biden’s campaign took off; boosted by Black voters, the former vice president crushed his opposition.
