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The RNC doesn't particularly want a bunch of hopeless candidates sucking up valuable airtime at the Party's candidates' debates, the first of which is scheduled for August 23. To that end, Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel announced that there would be four prerequisites for making the stage. A candidate must:
Thus far, #1 has worked out OK (though check back once someone challenges Donald Trump's candidacy on Fourteenth Amendment grounds). The other three have been... less successful, let's say.
Working in list order, #2 was always plainly foolish, as it's unenforceable. What is the RNC going to do if a person fails to honor the pledge—send them to bed without their nightly Big Mac? There cannot be a single person in the entire country who thinks that, if Donald Trump is denied the nomination, he'll give his support to the candidate who conquers him. Meanwhile, Ron DeSantis has refused to say if he'll honor the pledge, Asa Hutchinson has implied that he won't back Trump if Trump is the nominee, Will Hurd has outright said he won't support Trump, Chris Christie has also said he won't support Trump, and Mike Pence and Vivek Ramaswamy have both equivocated. That means that the only candidates who apparently plan to honor the pledge, no matter what, are Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND), Nikki Haley, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) and Mayor Francis Suarez (R-Miami). And we can tell you, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that those four are not the candidates the RNC was worried about.
Moving on to #3, we've already written about how the RNC's rules for what polls actually count, for debate-qualifying purposes, are quite stringent. As a reminder, to be valid, the poll has to have 800 likely Republican primary voters. There are not very many polls right now with that many people, because collecting that many responses is expensive, and not worth the investment since the election is still over a year away. To a large extent, media outlets and polling operations are only investing enough resources to get a broad overview of how things stand, not fine-grained results. Most of the polls that count for debate purposes will be online polls, since it's far cheaper to get the response rate up on those.
And finally, #4 on the list was just begging to be gamed by candidates with money to burn. That is to say, candidates like Ramaswamy and Burgum. The former already used "rewards" for donors to effectively buy the necessary number of donations to qualify, and now the latter is taking things to extremes. Would you like a $20 gift card? All you have to do is be among the first 50,000 people to donate $1 to Burgum's campaign. The Governor is doing his best to make this look kosher, explaining that the cards are "Biden Economic Relief Gift Cards" designed to help people suffering from "Bidenflation." But the only thing being Bidenflated here is the cost of a podium at the Republican candidates' debate; if everyone who gets a gift card gives the minimum $1, then the outlay by Burgum will be $950,000.
This isn't the first time a national party has tried to manage its list of debate participants, but never has it turned into such a laughable circus. Is that because the rules for this cycle were badly conceived? Maybe. Is it because the candidates the GOP attracts these days are unusually willing to bend the rules, because the ends justify the means? Could be that, too. Whatever the case may be, the GOP is probably stuck with this nonsense for at least one debate, and probably two or three, since the RNC would be sued if it tried to rewrite the rules on the fly. Maybe McDaniel can find a way to clean up the mess thereafter. (Z)