by Frank Holmes, reporter
Not a vote has been cast, not a single candidate has dropped out of the race… but Republicans associated with his campaign say the GOP should cancel all future debate and throw its support behind former President Donald J. Trump.
While the movement is being led by former President Trump, it has some prominent backers… and others who think it’s far too controversial.
Seven Republican presidential hopefuls gathered on stage at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, last Wednesday for the second debate which turned into a fiasco.
The widely panned event saw the moderators lose control in the opening minutes, as the candidates spoke over top of each other, with the audience unable to understand a single word.
The questions focused on giving illegal aliens amnesty, getting the candidates to fight with each other, and taking guns out of the hands of law-abiding American citizens.
It’s no surprise ratings were down—way down—with 9.5 million people watching. That’s almost four million fewer people than watched the first debate… and the 26 percent audience drop wasn’t because viewers missed seeing former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson.
Fewer people cared what the other seven candidates had to say, or what Fox News had to ask them.
Donald Trump skipped both debates, sitting for an interview with Tucker Carlson the first time, and addressing a crowd of auto workers in Michigan the second time.
Surprisingly, Trump’s support went up two points after he skipped the chaotic second debate, with 62 percent of Republicans making him their top pick to face Joe Biden in 2024 according to one poll.
Trump claims the polls, and past experience, should be enough for the Republican Party to skip the debates… and maybe the primaries… and just hand him the nomination.
“The Republican National Committee should immediately cancel the upcoming debate in Miami and end all future debates in order to refocus its manpower and money on preventing Democrats’ efforts to steal the 2024 election,” said two Trump campaign advisers, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita.
“Anything less, along with other reasons not to cancel, are an admission to the grassroots that their concerns about voter integrity are not taken seriously and national Republicans are more concerned about helping Joe Biden than ensuring a safe and secure election.”
Instead of holding a third debate on November 8 in Miami “the RNC should immediately put an end to any further primary debates so we can train our fire on Crooked Joe Biden and quit wasting time and money that could be going to evicting Biden from the White House,” LaCivita said in a statement following the second debate,” said LaCivita.
Trump’s campaign has a prominent supporter: former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, one of two finalists to be Trump’s vice president in 2016.
“I think the Republican National Committee should cancel the future debates, and say, ‘Look, we recognize the objective fact that Trump will be the nominee. We want to work with him,’” Gingrich said. “And then the next big hurdle is a totally corrupt judicial system, which is trying every way it can to deny the American people the right to have the candidate that they’re choosing.” he told The Ingraham Angle late last month.
The Republican National Committee “might as well quit having the various debates, cause they don’t work,” Gingrich continued quoting pollster Matt Towery. “They’re not helping anybody.”
GINGRICH: “None of them are in the same league as Donald Trump…he’s a phenomenon. He's unlike anything I've seen." https://t.co/ZU1MzgC3tJ
— Sean Hannity 🇺🇸 (@seanhannity) September 29, 2023
There’s no doubt that Trump is the massive front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination — even after two skipped debates and four partisan indictments.
Trump leads DeSantis by more than 45 points in the RealClearPolitics average of polls.
And right now, he’s leading Joe Biden in a one-on-one presidential contest by up to 10 points.
But the other side says skipping debates — let alone stopping voters from choosing their candidate in the primaries — isn’t the way things are done in America.
Yes, Republican viewership fell, but Trump’s speech to the auto workers barely scraped up half-a-million viewers (522,000, to be exact).
“We don’t do coronations in the Republican Party, not even for Donald Trump,” said Florida State Rep. Spencer Roach, a Republican.
“I supported President Trump and voted for him twice. I was honored to speak on stage with Ivanka Trump in Fort Myers to support President Trump’s reelection,” he wrote.
But candidates have to argue, campaign, debate, and win before they’re handed the nomination, he said.
“Blind loyalty to President Trump has become a litmus test of conservative bona fides and any opinion to the contrary — real or perceived — is met with immediate public reproach, repudiation, and ostracization. This type of totalitarian groupthink and cancel culture is the very thing that our party has professed to be fighting against,” he concluded.
What do you think: Should the debates go on? Should Trump participate?
Or should they skip the primaries and give Trump the nomination?
Should the primary debates continue?
Vote here --
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”