GOP candidates delay RSVPing for debates

The Republican National Committee is preparing to host its first presidential primary debate of the season on Aug. 23, but few of the party’s 14 candidates have agreed to participate. Most of them are crying foul at RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel’s new debate rules. The frontrunner, former President Donald Trump, likely will not attend either way.

McDaniel rolled out debate qualifications earlier this month. Any candidate hoping for a spot on the stage must meet the standard federal rules: be a natural-born citizen, declare candidacy, and file with the Federal Election Commission. In addition, the RNC now mandates that candidates must receive support from at least 1 percent of voters in three national polls. They need 40,000 unique donors in 20 or more states. They also have to sign three pledges: to share data with the RNC, to only participate in RNC-sanctioned debates for the rest of the election cycle, and to support the eventual party nominee.

Eyeing Trump’s 30-point lead over the next closest challenger, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, most candidates seem unwilling to make a pledge of support.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie launched his campaign as an anti-Trump candidate.

“It’s only in the era of Donald Trump that you need somebody to sign something on a pledge. So I think it’s a bad idea,” Christie told CNN’s State of the Union. “In all my life, we never had to have Republican primary candidates take a pledge. The idea is you’d support the Republican whether you won or whether you lost. You didn’t have to ask somebody to sign something.”

In interviews with Newsmax, McDaniel called the rules a no-brainer that fell within her overall strategy to beat President Joe Biden in the 2024 general election.

“I think we should have a standard if you’re going to be running for president of the United States, and not everybody deserves to be on that debate stage,” McDaniel said. “This isn’t about one candidate. This is about beating Joe Biden.”

Ohio-based Republican strategist Mark Weaver said McDaniel’s rules look more stringent than they really are. The Democratic National Committee has a 10 percent polling threshold for its debates, though it did remove an individual donor requirement in 2020.

“If Republicans want to beat Joe Biden, they have to have rules in place that will bring the party together,” Weaver told me. “There has to be some way of narrowing that field to people who have at least a double-digit likelihood of being the eventual nominee. So actually, 1 percent is a pretty low bar.”

Just as candidates like Christie are unwilling to pledge support to Trump, Trump is also unwilling to pledge support to anyone else. In 2015, Trump did sign a loyalty pledge at the urging of then–RNC Chairman Reince Priebus. But on the debate stage that October, he was the only candidate not to raise his hand when asked to reaffirm the pledge.

Mark Meckler, president of The Convention of States, was speaking with voters in majority Republican states last month when he found that most of them expressed dissatisfaction with McDaniel and the RNC. Following a disappointing midterm election, Meckler heard voters say they no longer trust the RNC to lead effectively. He ordered a survey through The Trafalgar Group, a polling organization, that found most Republican voters want the candidates themselves to set the debate terms.

“It would be difficult, but it makes for a better debate,” Meckler told me. “If folks want to debate, they should be required to agree on a rule set. That discussion and pre-debate about the set of rules would be telling and I think the American public deserves to see. If you want unity, you don’t impose it. You negotiate.”

Trump could probably skip the debate without losing his commanding lead. Weaver said debates help lesser-known candidates appeal to voters.

“There are candidates who will agree to any set of rules to be on that debate stage,” Weaver said. “Frankly, Trump not being there will decrease the viewership of it.”

In Truth Social posts on Monday, the former president criticized Fox News for not covering some of his recent speeches. Two Fox anchors are slated to moderate the RNC debate in August. Trump said the network only wants him to boost viewership for the debate.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has about 21.5 percent of voters’ support as of this week but has not confirmed whether he would sign the RNC pledges. Former Vice President Mike Pence has said Trump is unfit to be president but told CNN he would sign the pledge because he is confident Trump will not be the nominee. Christie told CNN he will “do what I need to do to be up on that stage to try to save my party and save my country from going down the road of being led by three-time loser Donald Trump.”

Nikki Haley is the only candidate so far not to question the metrics. She called candidates who refuse to sign a loyalty pledge irresponsible in a tweet last week. Her campaign confirmed to WORLD that she meets all the RNC requirements and looks forward to debating on Aug. 23.

Seven other candidates, including Hutchinson, do not yet meet the minimum polling standards. The RNC will consider polls conducted in July and onward.