The Iowa straw poll is dead. Long live the Fox News debate.
For decades, the August event in the Hawkeye State has served as a first culling of Republican candidates for president.
But last week witnessed something of a coup – tangible fruit of Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus’ effort to shorten his party’s presidential nomination process, and curtail the early dominance of flavor-of-the-week candidates like those who kept Mitt Romney from laying early claim to the crown in 2012.
On Aug. 6, Fox News will host the first nationally televised debate of GOP presidential candidates in Cleveland, the site of its national convention next year. The event pre-empts the Iowa straw poll by two days. But the culling will come even before the first question is asked by an ideologically trusted panel of Fox News journalists.
As many as 20 Republicans have announced or expressed interest in a White House bid. With Priebus’ approval, Fox News announced Wednesday that it would invite the 10 leading candidates – based on their averages in the five most recent, nationally recognized polls. More would share the stage in case of a tie.
Lesser candidates would be awarded Fox News airtime elsewhere. But given the influence the cable news network has with Republican voters, viewers could easily interpret a candidate’s presence in the debate as a seal of approval.
Hours before Fox News announced its decision on Wednesday, former House speaker Newt Gingrich – who ran a never-say-die presidential campaign in 2012 – sounded a note of warning.
“I’m very much concerned that we don’t have either the news media or the party institutions kill people before they even get a chance to see the voters,” said the former Georgia congressman, whose own presidential bid was partly fueled by stirring debate performances. “The American people should decide which candidates are real, not some formula designed by people to see the best known.”
Bill Clinton was nowhere near the top of the list of Democratic contenders in 1991. A year out, John McCain’s 2008 White House bid had tanked – and was months away from its resurgence, Gingrich noted.
Already, critics have pointed out the odd dictates of poll-driven debate criteria. Neurosurgeon Ben Carson, a first-time candidate with only a slim chance at the GOP nomination, would be included.
John Kasich, the Ohio governor and veteran former congressman, who will be campaigning in Georgia on Tuesday, would not. Neither would Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO and the only woman currently in the GOP field.
Shutting out Fiorina while you’re looking for a candidate to face down Hillary Clinton? That has possibilities, but none of them are good.
On the same day Fox News announced its criteria, CNN announced its candidate-qualification standards for a Sept. 16 debate to be held at the Ronald Reagan presidential library in California.
Perhaps because Republicans are somewhat suspicious of it, CNN chose what might be termed the more conservative route. It will host two debates among two separate panels of GOP presidential candidates.
The adults table will feature the top 10 candidates based on national polling. The children’s table will feature lower-ranking candidates who score at least 1 percent in national polling.
In some ways, the CNN bar for candidates – which was also approved by Priebus — is slightly higher than the one set by Fox News. For instance, candidates will be required to have paid staffers in two of the four early-voting states: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. Name ID alone won’t cut it, Mr. Trump.
In the misty past, it was once the job of political party stalwarts to tell potential candidates that it just wasn’t their year. But with a shift from the Iowa straw poll to a nationally televised platform, the Republican nomination process may now be even more of a debate-driven beast than in 2012.
So the job of winnowing the field has fallen to the media. With RNC supervision.
The pacing of the GOP primary isn’t the only driving concern. Square footage is, too. A stage can only hold so many bodies. Give 20 candidates 30-second opening and closing statements, and you’ve already burned through one-third of an hour-long debate.
Georgia had a man behind the closed-door discussions that produced this week’s debate decisions. RNC member Randy Evans is an Atlanta attorney and longtime Gingrich stalwart.
Evans had sounded the alarm on the Republican debate dilemma weeks ago, pushing for a decision. Every candidate in the GOP contest will be required to adjust their strategies to meet the new Fox News and CNN criteria. Time is precious.
“This is a train. And every day that goes by the train goes faster. Evans said on Tuesday. “If you have a train crash at 30 miles an hour, it’s bad – but it’s not horrible. You have a train crash at a hundred miles an hour, and it’s devastating.”
The adjustments have already begun. Shortly after the Fox News announcement, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee announced he wouldn’t participate in the Iowa straw poll, leaving only Mr. Trump to collect the ballots.
Huckabee is almost sure to be one of the favored 10 in the Fox News debate. But it would surprise no one if he showed up in Atlanta the next day, for the RedState.com gathering put together by WSB Radio’s Erick Erickson.
The RedState is another stage, likely to be well-televised nationally, for a GOP primary that’s becoming something more than a state-by-state crawl.
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