Did Republicans Outsmart Themselves?

In a certain respect, the 2024 Republican presidential primaries have also been rigged, this time to Trump’s benefit, even if that wasn’t necessarily the intention.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) set a high bar for candidates to qualify for the debates: they had to have demonstrated a strong showing in early polls and assembled significant numbers of donors. These rules ended up weeding out the bulk of Trump’s competition even before the primaries got underway.

The RNC contends it had to set rigorous terms for the candidates’ debates to avoid a repeat of the 2016 spectacle, in which 17 candidates clamored to get in a word edgewise under the bright lights. The Talmud says you can’t hear two voices simultaneously, so 17 was a cacophony that voters couldn’t cut through. Some pundits have speculated the RNC’s goal was not to stifle competition but to propel one candidate from a smaller field who could emerge as an attractive alternative to Trump.

The fact that Nikki Haley has drawn more than 40% of the vote in New Hampshire and South Carolina shows that there was some method to the madness. But Trump has been winning 60%, and in election parlance, a 60%-40% victory is a landslide.