Former president (and current poll leader) Donald Trump told radio host Todd Starnes that he might reverse course and participate in the GOP primary debates, after all — and all I can say to that is: DO IT.
Asked by Starnes if he might “at some point” jump into the debates, Trump said, “I might. I mean, you know, it’s possible. I liked debating.” Trump added that he won in 2016 “because of the debates.”
“But at this moment,” he concluded, “I’m leading by so much that it seems foolish to do so.”
Probably. But things can change quickly in a primary race, particularly when we’re still months out from the first votes being cast.
There’s nothing certain in politics, particularly in primary politics. Did you know that frontrunners face a “nightmare” in the Iowa caucuses? The last time a Republican frontrunner won there against any opposition whatsoever was Bob Dole in 1996. The only other one was Gerald Ford in 1976. In every other primary year, Iowa has served as a burial ground for frontrunners’ hubris.
ASIDE: George W. Bush won Iowa in 2000 and then went on to win the nomination and the election — but John McCain had enjoyed comfortable leads in national polls.
I don’t think the early national polls are worth much, but, whatever they’re worth, Trump slipped six points in the first one released after the Milwaukee debate.
Getting back in the debate action would go a long way towards showing that Trump isn’t taking anything for granted, and voters usually respond well to that.
On a FiveThirtyEight podcast following last week’s GOP debate in Milwaukee (transcript here), senior political reporter Monica Potts said she was “honestly surprised at how little [Trump] came up.” Political science professor and 538 contributor Meredith Conroy argued that Trump’s absence provided “more air for Republicans to discuss their issues.”
Some did that quite well, too. It was a lively debate, minus some third-grade nonsense like moderator Bret Baier asking the candidates to raise their hands to show whether they support this thing or that. Lively as it was, it would have been livelier still — and more informative, too — had Trump participated.
Since Mr. Trump is a fan of blunt talk (it’s one of his great strengths, really), allow me to be blunt here. I find it off-putting as a voter that the former president seems to think he’s entitled to my vote. Nobody has polled me, so I don’t show up in the 50% or more who say they’ll vote for Trump in their state’s primary or caucus. But I like to vote for the candidate who has fought hard to earn my vote.
How are we supposed to know if he’ll fight the Swamp — his one big failing the first time around — if he won’t fight for our votes?
In a republic like ours, loyalty runs downhill. We aren’t subjects to some royal sovereign who owns our allegiance by divine right. In this great republic, the politicians work for us — or at least they’re supposed to. Every election, our leaders have to show they’ve remained loyal to our interests. (And to the Constitution, of course, but that isn’t germane here.)
It isn’t just me who feels this way, either. “Republican voters largely supported former President Donald Trump’s decision to sit out the first GOP debate last week, but most say he should show up for the next one,” according to an Economist-YouGov poll conducted right after the debate. Fifty-seven percent of GOP voters said they thought Trump should jump in, and that figure dropped only to 54% among just pro-Trump Republicans.
Granted, Trump had a point in his Truth Social video when he said that the other candidates, none of whom poll much over 15%, are “just pretenders to the throne.”
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But there’s no throne in the Oval Office. There’s no inheriting the Resolute desk, not even from one’s self.
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