For about a day, it looked like the Republican presidential candidates had figured out the strength of collective bargaining—joining together to, in this case, demand that debate moderators go easy on them. But
trust Donald Trump to blow up all that solidarity and togetherness. Robert Costa and David Weigel continue their in-depth reporting on this issue:
Trump plans to reject a joint letter to television network hosts regarding upcoming primary debates drafted Sunday at a private gathering of operatives from at least 11 presidential campaigns, the Republicans said.
The move by Trump, coming just hours after more than a dozen Republican strategists huddled in the Washington suburbs to craft a list of possible demands, effectively throttles an effort by the campaigns and the letter’s drafter, longtime GOP attorney Ben Ginsberg, to find consensus and work collectively to negotiate terms.
Trump commands the biggest audience of any of the candidates and is the most likely to go ahead and pull out of a debate if he doesn't like the deal he's getting, so the networks are more likely to listen to him than to some Paul-Cruz-Huckabee coalition.
Which means it'll likely be Trump's world (or debate stage), and the other candidates will just be trying to survive in it. If you were one of his competitors, would you want to participate in a Donald Trump-negotiated debate?