A Small GOP Debate Stage Is Critical

The Republican National Committee has finally produced a set of criteria that the GOP’s presidential aspirants must meet if they want to appear in any of the sanctioned 2024 debates.

To make the first debate stage, candidates will have to show that they have secured contributions from at least 40,000 individual donors and that they have the support of at least 1 percent of GOP primary voters in national polls. These are low barriers to entry, but they have nonetheless produced howls of displeasure from some of the Republican Party candidates.

“It seems that the RNC is going out of its way to purposely narrow the field at one of the earliest times in the party’s history,” one unnamed Republican consultant complained to Washington Post reporters. “And rather than finding a way for as many conservative voices to be heard by Republicans throughout the country, they are attempting to make this a two-man race.”