The pledge includes a clause saying that the candidate will support the eventual GOP nominee.
I mean, I can’t say I disagree with him at all in this case. Loyalty pledges are fucked.
Yeah. Imagine if the person who gets picked was a bigoted piece of shit (like… you know). Why on earth would someone want to be forced to support that just so that they can run for their primary in attempt to be slightly less shitty? It seems like this is just something that dooms the republican party to continue being horrible.
Especially since it is currently extremely likely Trump will be the GOP candidate, so this basically means most other possible candidates have to support Trump, which is obviously bad.
You love to see lt
Wow, so the shit show begins even before we had even one gop debate. Article states you can’t participate if you don’t sign the pledge to support the eventual nominee.
This is going to be really interesting…
Cue rally where he claims “they unfairly banned me from participating”
Lol yeah right. He’ll be there anyway and won’t have signed it
And call the others weak for signing it.
Where does this leave somebody like Chris Christie, who wants to debate, but has also been fervently outspoken against Trump. There’s no way he would support Trump should he become the nominee. Perhaps he has to just fade away at that point.
They were all against him in 2016 too. Until they weren’t.
That photo of Ted Cruz phonebanking for Trump after Trump straight up insulted Cruz’s wife? That one photo was all I needed to know about the direction things were headed in for the Republicans.
I was thinking of Lindsay saying if they nominated Trump it would destroy the party and then turning into a hardcore trump sycophant.
But Cruz may be a better example.
I think they are both good examples. Cruz is the example I specifically think of, but that doesn’t make good bad!
IMO Graham is a better example because he still had a reputation of principles at the time, being friend with McCain and in general being outspoken.
Cruz never had any of that. Everybody hates Ted Cruz, even his close colleagues and family.
Leaves him taking a long walk off a short bridge
Thats the goal, be interesting.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday said that he would not sign a loyalty pledge required by the Republican National Committee for participation in the first GOP debate this month.
During the interview, Trump also said he would announce next week whether he will participate in the Aug. 23 debate in Milwaukee, though a refusal to sign the loyalty pledge would make him ineligible under the RNC’s criteria.
The loyalty pledge also asks candidates to agree not to participate in any non-RNC sanctioned debate for the remainder of the election cycle.
Trump, Christie and Hutchinson are among at least eight candidates who appear to have met the donor and polling thresholds required to participate in the debates.
Former Vice President Mike Pence was the latest candidate to announce he had qualified for the debate, which will be hosted by Fox News.
NBC News reported in June that Trump was exploring potential counterprogramming during the first debate, according to people familiar with his deliberations.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
A substantial fraction of their base is his cult now, and the Republicans know that they cannot win without his support. Ultimately they will bow to his will because the parts of the party which have not been utterly brainwashed realize that it is currently their only path to victory, no matter how distasteful that is.
Doubtful, many repubs are probably sealed witnesses which would explain the speed with which everything is moving. That way they can in secret undermine trump and save face do they can give the nomination to someone who isn’t desantis or trump.
Doubtful, many repubs are probably sealed witnesses which would explain the speed with which everything is moving.
Are you referring to the trials? The best case scenario for Trump opponents is to delay them.
They know that if he is actually convicted, that will seal his nomination with the party’s base, who have a persecution complex and will have no problem at all voting for a felon (while driving to the polls with a “thin blue line” decal on the car, ignoring the irony).
Nope best case for his opponents is a split repub ticket with a convicted trump. If they win good great, they can try to pardon Trump and move on. If they lose they have an excuse and possible route to legal remedy and reelection.
I think to some degree, everyone is brainwashed. But holy shit, imagine being brainwashed by THIS GUY.
deleted by creator
He did that because he needed the money. He was in a very precarious financial situation in the early 2000s and probably would have gone bankrupt without this gig.
Hear me out on this one…
Trump signs the pledge. Since the RNC is a private body they can technically choose anyone they want and choose someone not Trump. Trump sues them bringing the question of the RNC/DNC into play. Trump further runs independent causing the RNC to sue him to keep him off the ballots (again also putting the RNC/DNC into question). While things work their way in the courts, Republicans have a split ticket problem.
Split the vote. Please.
Well, If he does not play according to the rules, just cut him out of the game. If you have the balls for it.
Trump is loyal to no one but himself. Even if he did sign it he would never honor it.
Honestly they should all refuse to sign it because the bastards should not agree to support the traitor Trump if he wins the nomination.
Trump believes he is going to lose the nomination. If he thought he was going to be the nominee, there wouldn’t be a problem signing the loyalty pledge. He believes the 3 or 4 other candidates he despises have a better chance at winning the nomination than he does.
My point is none of the other candidates should have agreed to sign it. It confirms they’ll support someone who tried to overthrow the government before they’ll vote Democrat.
And I’m not sure you’re right re: Trump’s motives. He wouldn’t agree to support the other candidates in 2016 either, and this time around I wouldn’t be surprised if he ran independent if he doesn’t get the nomination.
Trump’s motive is always narcissism. I don’t give a rat’s ass about his motives. I’m just amused at his belief. He has stated his concern that he could lose the nomination to someone he can’t support, and used the likelihood of his loss as his argument that he shouldn’t sign the pledge.
He didn’t think he was going to win in 2016. He lost in 2020. And he doesn’t think he’s going to win in 2024.
That’s what I don’t understand. Why doesn’t he sign it knowing full well he can just ignore that pledge once it becomes convenient to do so. Figured he would have learned that by now from his marriages.
I mean Trump is a pathological liar but he’s also got an ego the size of Texas. Signing the pledge would be, if only symbolically, ceding his free agency. He’d probably say something like:
What’s there to sign? I am the nominee. The rest of these knuckle heads just have a hard time admitting it. And frankly speaking I am the GOP when you think about it. The fact the RNC is too scared to put their money on me from the get go is a sign of weakness and this is why we’re having a hard time winning elections.
Yup! 100%
Your two party system is shit and everyone should be trying their hardest to force something else like STV.
Approval Voting (using a multi winner variant) and five member districts. No single winner system will break the two party system. Party proportional is better but America ain’t ready for that.
I prefer ranked choice to approval voting- it means compromise voting isn’t necessary. It also means that people are less likely to select someone just because of slight approval but they think they have a higher chance,
Yeah but RCV still has spoilers, like what with happened in the Alaska special election (among others). The big reason I like Approval best is that even the dumbest voter needs to understand how the voting system works, from beginning to end. If you think the lies about voter fraud and rigged elections are bad now, just imagine how many more people would believe them if they didn’t fully understand how the voting system works.
In practice RCV and Approval agree nearly all the way down the results and when they don’t, Approval does a better job of showing the true support for second and third place.
Hey hey hey Strangle Thorn Vale is fucking miserable dude, leveling there is basically asking to get ganked by some max level player farming world buffs. Easily as bad as the two part system
Trump will only support a candidate who will pardon him, and maybe give him “an awesome job”, like a diplomatic mission with diplomatic immunity. Saudi Arabia or some other rich kleptocracy, though, not just any s***hole country. Promising to support just any schmo, beforehand? There is no upside for Trump on that one.
He can be the ambassador to Pizza Hut
Nah, Pizza Hut makes profit.
RIP Gorbachev
o7
I am the GOP
Not yet.
Split the vote. Please.
Ooh maybe he can form a third party and field a bunch of candidates for the senate!
I fear all that will do is lead to Biden falling short of 270 and the election being thrown to congress.
Why would Trump splitting the GOP vote have an effect on Biden?
It doesn’t, I guess. But he will have a hard time either way.
Right? There’s still only X amount of potential GOP voters regardless of the candidate(s) and it’s not a number that’s experiencing rapid growth.
Then don’t let him debate. Why is this hard?
Don’t even let him run. Like grow a fucking backbone, ya ignoramuses.
Republicans don’t watch the debates, and literally cheered their candidates for ducking debates with democrats last election.
If they did watch debates, they would realize their candidates had zero platform worth voting for. The ones that do watch them are there for the drama, which this move also satisfies.
Ehh. Trump did terrible in the 2020 debates(although Pence did okay)- but the CNN townhall reflected well on him.
He doesn’t WANT to debate, why does nobody see this lol. We will never see him debate again
No one will tune in to the debates if Trump isn’t there and everyone knows it.
The networks that broadcast the debates want drama because they want views. Trump speaking is one of the biggest draws they can get. I mean he’s a bumbling idiot but everyone, left and right, is gonna want to know what he says.
I will never, ever understand how the entire Republican party lined up behind this guy.
Before Trump was elected, they were all vocal about how unfit he was. Too stupid. Too rude.
Then he got the nomination, and they all bent the knee, and became so loyal to him that they protected him from facing the consequences of his insurrection, even when he put their lives in danger.
They hate libs so much they will fall in line behind anyone.
Well, he became the guy who would sign their shitty legislation, appoint right-wing judges and other officials to long-term positions, undermine regulators, spread fascist propaganda amplified by the power of the presidency, etc. The person with the R next to their name opens the doors for the flood of partisan garbage and shuts down those pesky people who want things like “democracy” and “tap water that doesn’t poison my family.”
Power. Plain and simple.
He did exactly what republicans wanted to do just he kept saying the quiet part loud. Now they are stuck. He is a result of decades of right wing talk radio and tv telling people everyone who disagrees is a satan worshipping pedophile. I fear he wont be the worst though
Hilarious what that commitment to towing the party line got them
Same reason the anti-war democrats fell completely silent when Obama got elected, doubled the drone strikes, renewed the Patriot act, and attacked 2 more countries. Party matters a lot more than policy in this country.
My theory is that he dug up tons of leverage for each and every one of them. He talks like a mobster, deals like a mobster, decides like a mobster, he certainly keeps his posse in line like a mobster.
💀
The funny thing is that I think BEFORE Trump, Democrats might have been to some degree susceptible to the same sort of willful blindness to an awful human being who nonetheless supported our policy agenda.
But now, having watched, with disgust, the moral corruption in the Republican party, Democrats are now hypersensitive to it. We have all become more self critical, and more righteous because we’ve seen what a slippery slope it is that the Republicans fell down.
By contrast, Republicans have so much (mostly figurative) blood on their hands that they can’t admit they were wrong about Trump. They can’t admit it to us, and they certainly can’t admit it to themselves. If they were to acknowledge the glaringly obvious facts about Trump’s criminality regarding the attempt to overthrow the election or his theft, mishandling, and cover-up of classified documents, that would mean admitting that Democrats were right about Trump all along.
It’s clear that Republicans would rather lobotomize themselves with Fox News than ever, ever, ever, admit to themselves that they’ve been the bad guys for years.
The people who were criticizing Trump in the beginning were the ones with brains, that had gotten to the top to exploit power. They’re smart enough to know not to fight against the mob that is their support base. But also stupid enough to bring in someone that can rile up the mob better than they could.
