According to this New York Times story, the Republican National Committee will decide at its February meeting whether to pass a rule, requiring its presidential nominee to boycott presidential debates sponsored by the Presidential Debate Commission. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link. UPDATE: the national committee meeting is February 1-4.
FURTHER UPDATE: see this story, which has some details that are not in the first link.
The Commission could make things interesting by inviting minor party candidates to fill in.
Good, hopefully they do. The PDC is un-democratic anyway.
That’ll either shut down the PDC, or force them to become more inclusive towards minor party candidates. Either one would be a good turn of events.
Only party hack moderators asking 10 IQ questions to party hack Prez candidates ???
It might shut down the PDC, but the Republican’s demands do nothing to force them to include minor party candidates.
If they want good viewership, one-person “debates” aren’t the way to do that. With Gallup polls repeatedly showing a majority of folks at least open to the idea of a third or more parties, well, I suspect the folks at the commission would put two and two together in the absence of Republican participation; either they democratize their debates, or they become even more obsolete than they already are and probably eventually shut down due to a lack of interest from the general public.
Could someone here briefly summarize the Republicans’ demands/complaints? I’m paywalled out of the NYT and the other articles online report the threat but fail to say what the Republicans are asking for.
There won’t be any debates in 2024. At least not with major party candidates. Trump will just do rallies, much bigger than anything before, and easily sweep the election in a landslide so historically epic and huge that the dimocrats and their Chinese puppet masters won’t even come close to stealing it again this time. The Chinese puppet, whether it’s the geriatric senile one, the voodoo witch, or somebody else, is not going to give added credibility to third party candidates either. They will once again be debating each other.
Complaints:
• Waiting until after early voting had already begun to host the first presidential debate;
• Making unilateral changes to previously agreed-upon debate formats and conditions, in
some cases without even notifying the candidates;
• Selecting a moderator who had once worked for the Democrat nominee, a glaring conflict
of interest; and
• Failing to maintain the organization’s strict nonpartisanship, with a majority of its Board
Members publicly disparaging the Republican nominee.
Demands:
• Adopt term limits for its Board of Directors, several members of which have served for
more than a decade;
• Commit to holding at least one debate before the start of early voting, and in no case after
the deadline for states to mail absentee ballots to uniformed and overseas voters;
• Enact a code of conduct prohibiting CPD officers, directors, and staff from making public
comments supporting or opposing any candidate, or otherwise engaging in partisan
political activity in connection with the presidential election, with meaningful
consequences for violations;
• Establish transparent criteria for selecting debate moderators that would disqualify
individuals from consideration who have apparent conflicts of interest due to personal,
professional, or partisan factors; and
• Enact a transparent code of conduct for moderators in conducting debates, including
guidelines for appropriate interactions with the participating nominees, with meaningful
penalties for violations
Thanks Jim