The morning after the Iowa caucuses, former Ambassador Nikki Haley’s campaign made an unexpected announcement. The next primary debate for the remaining Republican presidential candidates was scheduled for Thursday — as in, tomorrow — but the South Carolinian said she won’t participate in any additional primary debates unless Donald Trump also agrees to appear on the stage.
ABC News and WMUR-TV in New Hampshire gave Haley and the former president a 5 p.m. deadline to “commit” to the event. When the GOP contenders missed that deadline, the networks scraped their scheduled plans. The New York Times reported overnight:
ABC News canceled a Republican presidential debate scheduled for Thursday in New Hampshire, after Ron DeSantis was the only candidate who had agreed to participate. … Ms. Haley’s statement also cast uncertainty over another upcoming Republican debate in New Hampshire, hosted by CNN and scheduled for Sunday.
[Update: Shortly after I published this, CNN canceled Sunday’s debate.]
For those keeping score, there have been five debates thus far for GOP presidential hopefuls in this election cycle, starting with a Fox News debate held in August, which generated a television audience of roughly 13 million viewers. But in the four events that followed, viewership dropped considerably — by one count, only 2.6 million viewers tuned in for last week’s Haley/DeSantis debate on CNN — and there was little to suggest those numbers would change.
What’s more, with Trump refusing to participate in any primary debate — and by all appearances, paying no meaningful political price for his obstinance — the case for a sixth and seventh debate was becoming increasingly difficult to make.
And so, barring an unexpected change of heart from two of three remaining candidates, the primary debate phase of the Republicans’ nominating process has come to a rather sudden halt. I’m left, however, with a related question that’s more difficult to answer:…
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