Republicans threaten to boycott presidential debates. Are they that afraid?

Pressed on his false claims of a rigged 2020 election, former president Donald Trump abruptly ended a recent interview with NPR. Nine minutes into the scheduled 15, he hung up. Avoiding questions is not as easy when you are onstage before a television audience numbering in the tens of millions. This might explain the Republican Party’s effort to undermine the general election debates that have become a decades-long fixture in American politics.

The Republican National Committee last week informed the Commission on Presidential Debates that it will require candidates seeking the GOP presidential nomination to sign a pledge not to participate in the commission’s debates. The letter from GOP Chairwoman Ronna Mcdaniel said the party has lost faith in the debate commission, a nonpartisan nonprofit founded in 1987 — with the support of both parties — that has for more than three decades hosted general election presidential and vice-presidential debates. “The RNC has a duty to ensure that its future presidential nominees have the opportunity to debate their opponents on a level playing field,” she wrote.

Both parties have complained about the debates in the past. In 2012, Democrats were upset by what they saw as moderator Jim Lehrer letting Republican Mitt Romney ignore ground rules in a debate with sitting president Barack Obama; and Republicans complained about a later debate in which moderator Candy Crowley, then of CNN, fact-checked Romney. Campaigns for Democratic and Republican candidates have sought to influence or control the debates, haggling with the commission over rules and at times threatening to pull out.

To be sure, the debates could be better. The commission should eliminate audiences and give moderators the ability to cut off candidates who flagrantly flout the rules, as Trump did constantly in his first 2020 debate with then-candidate Joe Biden. But these are no doubt not the sorts of changes that Republicans seek.

The commission has consistently produced credible debates that American voters value, and that have served as models for developing democracies. So the Republican Party’s threat to blow up the debates, to borrow Romney’s words, is “nuts.” American voters, he told Insider last week, “want to see candidates for president debating issues of consequence to them, and it provides a service to the country and to the people, to hear the prospective candidates of the two major parties duke it out.”

That Republican leaders see it differently is no doubt due to their allegiance — or, more accurately, their subservience — to Trump, the apparent front-runner for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination. As his abortive NPR interview and shambolic debate history show, Trump does not prosper when facing rigorous questioning in forums he cannot control.

The Republican National Committee will vote next month on boycotting the commission’s debates. Instead of choosing what is best for Trump, Republicans should opt for what is best for American voters.