Haley wants a debate. Trump does not. Here is The Post:
The Republican National Committee will not anoint former president Donald Trump as the GOPâs âpresumptive nomineeâ this week in Las Vegas after all. The Trump campaign wanted that formal designation bestowed but reversed course after several members of the partyâs governing body called it undemocratic, given that 48 states have yet to cast primary or caucus ballots.âI should do it the âOld Fashionedâ way,â the former president posted on social media, âand finish the process off AT THE BALLOT BOX.â
Thatâs progress: Mr. Trump wants voters, not an angry mob of his supporters, to decide an election. Apparently, he saw that it would have been politically unwise, even within the party he dominates, to so blatantly short-circuit the nominating process, in which he has thus far received 232,652 votes from Iowa and New Hampshire, earning 32 of the 1,215 delegates needed to clinch the nod.
Still, the machinations inside the RNC reflect the degree to which Mr. Trump has emerged as the boss of a new party establishment, having vanquished the old guard against which he waged political war for the past eight years. The last opponent standing in his way is former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who is determined to contest the primary on Feb. 24 in her home state. Mr. Trump, brushing aside her accusations that he is âtotally unhinged,â refuses, insultingly, to debate the woman he calls âBirdbrain.â
To be sure, debate avoidance is standard operating procedure for front-runners. If he were really so confident of his intellectual superiority to a rival whom he once admired enough to appoint as his ambassador to the United Nations, however, Mr. Trump would relish the chance to debate. Such a clash would certainly serve the Republican Party, and the country as a whole, by focusing attention on the degree to which Ms. Haleyâs accusations about his fitness for office have merit â as well as on the significant policy differences between the two.
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