The RNC Committee on Debates meets in Milwaukee today. Are they even aware their leaders are keeping voices off the stage that qualified? I'm calling for a discussion and a vote of the full committee on the rigged polling criteria set by the anti-conservative, anti-Trump RNC…

— Larry Elder (@larryelder) August 22, 2023

“Only after receiving our completed qualification package did the RNC inform us that they were not accepting Rasmussen Polls as qualifying toward the debate,” Elder stated.

“The reason, as stated by the RNC, is that Rasmussen Polls have ties to former President Donald Trump — an individual who is not even participating in the upcoming debate,” he said.

“Had the RNC notified the other campaigns that this was a problem, the Elder campaign could have made an effort to identify other qualifying polls,” the statement charged. “Yet, we were not given the opportunity even though the RNC clearly was aware of their poll problem.”

[Larry’s a friend, so I’m a little biased, but this shows how jerry-rigged these qualifications are. Everyone’s gaming the donor-numbers metric, with some campaigns literally paying people multiples on their donations to make the threshold numbers. No one was clear which polls qualified and which did not, and even where there was some clarity on methodology, almost no pollster met those standards either. This points to the larger issue of attempting to prevent a 2015 situation in which the size of the field allowed Trump to prevail by plurality, and whether that’s an appropriate role for a party’s central committee. If it is, then just set the debates up by invitation only and be done with it. At least that would be effective and somewhat honest. — Ed]