“It certainly gives the candidate more of an out if they’ve decided debating is to their disadvantage to be able to say, ‘The party rules prevent me from accepting’ the commission’s invitation,” said Trevor Potter, a former chair of the Federal Election Commission who served as general counsel to Republican John McCain’s two presidential campaigns.
The RNC, he said, is attempting to “blow up the structure and therefore change the expectation to ‘will they or won’t they‘” debate…
Republicans have long complained that debates and their media moderators are biased against them — what Saul Anuzis, a former chair of the Michigan Republican Party, called “a very serious frustration among Republicans in general, and many of the candidates in the campaigns, that we don’t necessarily get a fair deal.”
Even if “the RNC did this because they’re upset about the way the commission treated Trump,” said Scott Reed, the Republican strategist who managed Bob Dole’s presidential campaign in 1996, “this issue’s been boiling for cycles now.”
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