A month out from first GOP debate, thorny rules and a doubtful Trump
Polls leader may not show; others yet to make cut
With a month to go before the first Republican presidential debate, the stage in Milwaukee remains remarkably unsettled, with the front-runner, former president Donald Trump, waffling on his attendance and the rest of the participants far from certain.
Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida is in. So are Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina; Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina; and Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur and author. Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor and scourge of Trump, said he would be on the stage as well.
But the Republican National Committee’s complicated criteria to qualify for the Aug. 23 gathering — based on candidates’ donors and polling numbers — have created problems for others in the field.
Former vice president Mike Pence, who would be a serious candidate for the Republican nomination by most measures, may not be invited to debate because of the RNC’s measures: Candidates must have at least 40,000 individual donors, and 1 percent in three national polls of Republican voters, or 1 percent in two national polls and two polls in the early-primary states.
The debate in Milwaukee — the first of three scheduled so far — has been billed by the party and the candidates as an inflection point in a race that has remained in stasis, even with its front-runner under state and federal indictment, with more charges expected soon. Trump is likely to face charges next month stemming from his efforts to overturn President Biden’s 2020 victory in Georgia, and has been notified that he could be indicted soon on federal charges for clinging to power after his electoral defeat.
Yet he remains the prohibitive leader in state and national polling, with DeSantis a distant second and the rest of the field clustered in single digits.
The debate will offer the dark horses perhaps their last shot at making an impression, if they can qualify, and all candidates not named Trump a chance to present themselves as the true alternative to the legally challenged former president. Over the next month, political observers will see a steady taunting of the front-runner by candidates who see a no-lose scenario. Either they goad Trump to share the stage with them, giving them equal billing with the front-runner and a chance to take a shot at him, or they paint him as too scared to show up, denting his tough-guy image.
“As Governor DeSantis has already said, he looks forward to participating in the debates and believes Trump should as well — nobody is entitled to this nomination; they must earn it,” said Bryan Griffin, a spokesperson for the DeSantis campaign.
On CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Christie promised, “I’ll be on this stage for all of the debates, and I will hold Donald Trump personally responsible for failing us.”
For his part, Trump has stayed noncommittal. Senior advisers have counseled him against showing up and validating his challengers, but his rivals believe they can prick his ego and shame him to the stage.
“You’re leading people by 50 or 60 points, you say, why would you be doing a debate?” Trump said on Fox News last weekend. “It’s actually not fair. Why would you let someone who’s at zero or one or two or three be popping you with questions?”
In some sense, the Milwaukee debate is haunted by the circuslike atmosphere that pervaded the Republican debates of 2015 and 2016, when Trump ran roughshod over crowded stages with insulting nicknames and constant interruptions. At one point, the discussion devolved into lewd references to the significance of the size of Trump’s hands.
The RNC’s thresholds were intended to keep the number of participants down and ensure that only serious candidates made the stage. The final roster will not be set until 48 hours before debate night, when the last polls come in and the candidates must pledge that they will back the eventual Republican nominee.
But with a month to go, the polling and donor thresholds are already narrowing the field.
Ronna McDaniel, who chairs the RNC, said Friday on Fox Business that a candidate who cannot win more than “40,000 different small-dollar donations” is “not going to be competitive against Joe Biden.”
Candidates such as Ramaswamy and Scott have used the donor rules to tout the power of their campaigns.
“Tim will be on the debate stage for months to come thanks to over 145,000 donations from over 53,000 unique donors across all 50 states,” said Nathan Brand, a spokesperson for the Scott campaign.