It was the misfortune of the authors of this 2008 book, as it was Francis Fukuyama's earlier, that events made liars out of them in a mere eight years. Political science books usually have a longer shelf life owing to the squishiness of their theses and the elliptical parentheticals that protect them from instant and decisive refutation. Note to authors: avoid clear, adamantine titles.
Comes now however, the "Republican Pledge".
Responding to growing pressure from party donors and officials to dissuade Donald J. Trump from mounting an independent campaign for president, the Republican National Committee on Wednesday asked each of the party’s presidential candidates to sign a statement vowing not to run as a third-party candidate.
That was in 2015.
“I ______ affirm that if I do not win the 2016 Republican nomination for president of the United States, I will endorse the 2016 Republican presidential nominee regardless of who it is. I further pledge that I will not seek to run as an independent or write-in candidate nor will I seek or accept the nomination for president of any other party.”
In 2016 only one candidate, Donald J. Trump, refused to sign the pledge. He was allowed to participate in officially sanctioned GOP debates.
For 2024 the party has decided that signing the pledge is a precondition to access to the debate stage and the object is not to prevent Trumpie from running as an Indie but rather, to grease the wheels for the Grand Old Phelon to to be the Party's standard bearer agayne with Gibraltar support for high crimes and misdemeanors from dissenting contenders:
Top Republican Party officials have a message for any candidate worried about signing a loyalty pledge to potentially support a convicted felon: There’s the door.
There may be those, actually there are,--Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson--who view this party decision as upside down in its logic, binding, as it does, the Party to an individualoid who is an existential threat to said Party and, incidentally, to the country, rather than say to that instantiation of death and destruction, "There's the door.", but, the Party has decided, with RNC chair Ronna McDaniel calling the pledge, a "no brainer". Which, yeah. I, for one, am full 100 in agreement with this "no brainer."
