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The GOP will hold its next presidential primary debate a month from now\u2014supposing Donald Trump<\/strong>, who has boycotted the first two, doesn\u2019t get his way. Earlier this week, the former president once again called for the remaining events to be canceled\u2014a move that would essentially declare him the nominee, in the eyes of the Republican National Committee, before a single primary vote has been cast. And while RNC leadership has said it will \u201ccontinue to sanction debates\u201d as long as there are candidates interested in taking the stage, party officials increasingly seem aware of their futility\u2014unless Trump himself is up there.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t put your head in the sand and pretend these debates are going to result in someone other than Donald Trump getting the nomination,\u201d as Patti Lyman<\/strong>, RNC national committeewoman for Virginia, told<\/a> Politico of the \u201cembarrassing\u201d events the GOP has already held. \u201cAfter the failure of the first debate,\u201d added Tyler Bowyer<\/strong>, national committeeman from Arizona, \u201cthere should have been some severe introspection into what\u2019s going on here.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think the only way you salvage it is if you get the frontrunner there,\u201d Bowyer said.<\/p>\n But Trump has had little reason to appear with his competitors: He leads his next closest challenger, the floundering Ron DeSantis<\/strong>, by more than 40 points in polls\u2014and neither of the first two debates<\/a> have done much to weaken his advantage. In fact, some<\/a> polls<\/a> have suggested Trump put his challengers even lower on the totem poll after the first two debates he skipped. His rivals, meanwhile, have struggled to land any punches on him, with the most aggressive\u2014Chris Christie<\/strong>, hovering somewhere around two percent in polls\u2014straining to get his \u201cDonald Duck\u201d<\/a> nickname to stick. And the party already proved it has no leverage over him when he defied the loyalty pledge<\/a> RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel<\/strong> put in front of the candidates. Why would Trump do anything differently going forward?<\/p>\n That leaves the GOP with a slate of debates that are unlikely to feature the dominant frontrunner and that some of the other candidates have even begun to criticize. \u201cAnother unhelpful debate in November is not an option,\u201d Ben Yoho<\/strong>, CEO of Vivek Ramaswamy<\/strong>\u2019s campaign, told the RNC on Sunday, calling for only Trump\u2019s top four challengers to be allowed on the stage. Christie and Tim Scott<\/strong> have also called for rule changes, with the latter proposing<\/a> that the criteria be amended to give more weight to early primary state polling than national polls. But shrinking the debate stage, as Ramaswamy wants to do, or rearranging the podiums, as Scott is asking for, still wouldn\u2019t address the biggest issue\u2014the GOP clown-show is missing its ringmaster.\u00a0<\/p>\n The party insists that the show\u2014which lost a quarter of its viewership<\/a> from the first episode to the second\u2014must go on, even as the Trump campaign calls on the RNC to \u201crefocus its manpower\u201d<\/a> on the general election. \u201cWe have rules,\u201d Jason Thompson<\/strong>, Georgia\u2019s national committeeman, told Politico. \u201cWe aren\u2019t anointing people.\u201d But that’s effectively what they’re doing if neither the party nor Trump’s challengers can make these debates meaningful.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n