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Republican Debate Might Be A Negative for Candidates, Because of Skewed Requirements by Republican National Committee

(SCW 8.23.23) As explained by the Wall Street Journal and others, when would-be Republican presidential candidates hold their debate Wednesday night, Aug. 23, 2023, it will be limited to willing candidates who also meet criteria set by the Republican National Committee.

The most glaring concern is the requirement that a candidate must declare that they will blindly support whoever ends up being nominated by the Republican National Convention.

That requirement lays itself open to charges that the RNC is not looking to promote and involve the best qualified candidates and leaders who are Republican.

Instead, the RNC risks being accused of subordinating quality, leadership and policy relevance to a self-promoting "animal pack" mentality that places a higher priority on a "go along, to get along" attitude towards party insiders.

In other words, the RNC risks making it look as if America itself and world-class leadership are less important to the RNC than lockstep party insider promotion.

Most problematic would be if the RNC ever ended up with a candidate who held horrible positions on particular major issues. For example, if the RNC ended up with a nomine who was pro-abortion, or somewhat weak on their prolife standing, and wanted to pressure support for that person, they would be acting at cross purposes. A pro-abortion candidate, by definition, is someone whose abortion position poses an existential threat to the legitimacy of American democracy, since abortion itself represents such a threat.

A country cannot claim to be a democracy if its government is dedicated to support the mass-killing of huge portions of the population.

Beyond making it a negative mark against a candidate to agree to such a promise, the fact that a candidate would do so blindly, with no idea as to who a final nominee will be, or what they might represent, would call into the question such a candidate's judgment and leadership, perhaps even their patriotism.

In addition, there are requirements regarding money and fundraising, that candidates have had at least 40,000 unique donors who have donated to their principal campaign committe, with at least 200 unique donors in each of 20 or more states or territories.

Some political insiders, who perhaps see their own standing and careers intertwined with political money to "grease" or "fuel the machine," might try to advance false arguments that fundraising support is a litmus test for popular appeal.

But money, of course, is not a relevant factor to eligibility for the presidency, and irrelevant to what makes a candidate the best choice for president. By exaggerating its relevance, and making a foundational qualification for entering a presidential debate, the RNC risks making it look as if their thinking, and their processes. overemphasizes money, or perhaps even are "bought and paid for."

Indeed, given that the various economic challenges and difficulties facing the nation, to highlight extraneous, superficial financial factors as a gateway for presidential debates is a somewhat amateurish blunder. The RNC is thereby, once again, laying itself open to being accused of poor judgment and being "tone deaf" about what the country is going through.

That poor judgment could be deemed insensitive, as well as blundering into the risk of making the Republican Party sound like the party of wealth and privilege, "out of touch" with what people are going through.

While candidates have only a passive role at meeting that requirement, whereby their numbers are simply assessed by the RNC, the candidates still risk being deemed to have poor judgment and insensitivity for associating with the framework. They also risk looking weak for not challenging the arrangement.

Another qualification candidates must meet is to have polled at 1% or above in three national polls, not conducted by their campaign, and at 1% or above from at least two of four early-voting states, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

There might seem to be some reasonable basis to want to measure popular support for a candidate, to include candidates with at least minimal levels of support.

But that is not what the RNC is doing.

One could argue at length about polling methods and whether they have usefulness.

Yet, in the end, opinion poll numbers are not actually real, except for the tiniest of percentages of individuals who actually were polled.

To pretend as if the numbers are interesting or useful for news or analysis is one thing. It is an entirely different matter to use them as a basis for inclusion in a supposedly "official" debate.

Even worse, the opinion polls rest upon the notion that huge numbers of Americans, those who having nothing to do with a particular opinion poll, somehow are not thinking individuals who make considered decisions, but instead are defined by superficial selfish circumstances.

For example, the attitude that the poll numbers have exaggerated relevance imply that the broader population is defined, and governed by, factors such as income, gender, age, industry, and so forth, including shallow selfish interests, rather than being thinking human beings gathering all relevant information and making thoughtful choices.

Petitions would be just one more concrete basis for establishing that support was actually real, rather than a hypothetical, imaginary level of support extrapolated from academic exercises applied to the responses a very small number of people.

Participation by candidates in such a framework risks associating a candidate with problematic attitudes reducing individual citizens to their circumstances and supposed biases, calling into question the judgment and credibility of such candidates.

Exaggerated emphasis on a handful of states also risks placing the quirks and habits of political insiders, and the unfolding nature of a campaign that is familiar and "old hat" to them, ahead of the nation as a whole. The RNC thereby once again risks sounding like self-focused "party hacks" with a certain degree of obliviousness to the much more far-reaching concerns and interests of the American people, geographic and otherwise.

Of course, the debate's relevance already is questionable, given that its far-and-away frontrunner, former President Donald Trump, is declining to attend and instead is attempting to compete with the debate from afar with a separate broadcast.

— Steven C. Welsh, Aug. 23, 2023

 

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Key Words: Republicans, Presidential Debate, Presidential Election, Donald Trump, 2024 Election