I find this quite interesting.
A close associate tells Politico that Donald Trump plans to sign a loyalty pledge “that would bind him to endorse the Republican nominee, and would preclude a third-party run. Trump made the stunning decision, which he has long resisted, to avoid complications in getting listed on primary ballots, and to take away an attack line in the next debate.”
“So his decision to give it up is a sign that he increasingly wants to show his campaign is real and not a stunt. The colorful magnate is also trying to make that point by adding staff in key states, issuing position papers, and pursuing access to primary ballots throughout the country.”
Something like a month ago there was open speculation that the Republican Establishment would try to find some way of excluding Donald Trump from their first debate. Rick Perry called Trump a malignancy on conservatism. People were lining up to sever their business relationships with the real estate developer.
Flash forward to today and the Republican Establishment has extracted an oath from Trump to remain loyal to their party.
I know that the reason for this is to try to prevent him from running as a third party candidate, and they actually used their power to scare Trump into making this pledge out of fear that he’d be denied ballot access as in independent.
But the result is that they’ve bound him to their party by demanding that he stay a member.
So, never mind that thing about him being too racist to allow on the debate stage, or him being a cancer, or him being too toxic to do business with.
They’ve secured him as a captive member of their party now.
They own him.
Or…he owns them, of course.
We shall see.
AG
For once I agree with AG. I think you’ve got the owner-owned relationship backwards.
I think Booman means they own what he does, i.e., they can’t distance themselves from him.
Not the the GOP actually owns Trump.
Ah, after a re-reading I think you’re right. In which case, I heartily agree! Good luck with that, Goopers.
How did you get that reading from these two consecutive sentences?
“…a captive member of their party…”
He has been “captured.” Thus they own him.
They control him.
Duh.
Of course, the fact of the matter is most likely that whatever he “signed” or agreed to has no force of law or anything else to hold Trump to it. It’s just reality TV politics as usual. All show, no real go. Seriously cross him and he’ll bolt. He knows it and they know it too.
It’s a gigantic con game. Only the marks believe it.
AG
We’ll see who is the nominee. If Jeb! is the nominee this agreement won’t be worth the paper it’s written on. This agreement isn’t really legally binding anyway, right?
That’s my take and it’s the analysis on talkingpointsmemo too. The Republican party’s leverage was in making it hard for Trump to compete in their primaries. If he runs as an independent, they lose all leverage. Can’t make a guy sign over his fundamental rights. They’ll make a big stink of course and try to convince everyone Trump’s a big rat. But that’s a dangerous strategy for the Republicans because those voters they can least afford to lose most of all want to vote for a fellow rat.
For a different view, see:
http://www.tsu.co/AlGiordano/78415082
From your quote:
Did they think he wouldn’t sign it? Short-sighted fools. Personally I always thought the cost of an independent run was staying in Trump’s pocket. This is also perhaps his excuse to accept at least RNC money if he wins the nomination; an inevitable shift but requiring some tricky contortions on Trump’s part.
How about a cut and paste of Al’s thoughts?
Does this mean that The Donald will be signing all the other conservative pledges? Where is Grover? Time for his one on one with The Donald. Oh, and The Donald owns them…they just rolled over and will now play dead.
and just what EXACTLY happens to him if he runs 3rd party anyway? The oath is not enforceable. Its a yellow dog contract and cannot be enforced.
He is ALL THEM!!
Sigh…..
hee hee hee
Once Trump entered the race as a Republican, I don’t think he ever intended to run as an IND if he fell flat at any stage of the primary process. That said, I don’t see anything wrong with all candidates of any party committing to one party ID for any one election cycle.
1980 might have turned out differently if after being rejected by Republicans, the faux moderate, IND run of Anderson hadn’t happened. Then there was Lieberman in the 2006 CT SEN race.
But this is becoming a bad remake of the Godfather. Good rats, bad rats, honour and betrayal; prime time reality TV.
How so? Are you saying that if Anderson had stayed off the ballot, Reagan would have received less votes instead of more?
Trump has in many important ways already won.
Why tarnish the win with a pointless third party run?
Because he’s a conceited, classless individual who wants to have more 15 minutes of fame?
Except as an IND candidate, the GOP MSM would have no need to cover him. His TV access would be reduced to whatever he could buy and given that the public has the attention and memory spans of a gnat, it would cost a lot for him just to show in the GE.
You really believe the MSM wouldn’t still hang on his every word? I don’t. He’s big box-office for them.
Is that really how the “big boys” play? That it’s always only easy ratings? Seems to me that Murdoch-Ailes-Luntz would be happy to deep six Trump. MSNBC axed Phil Donahue when he became inconvenient for GE. And NBC can’t be too pleased with Trump considering they had to dump him.
It really depends upon the circumstances that would force him to run as an independent. If he flames out in the polls and loses primaries badly I think the media lose interest except for the “can you believe how dumb this guy still is” kind of stories that they ran on Palin for 5-6 years.
But, if the powers that be sabotage the primary structure in a way that gives Trump a narrow loss (think of all the things Jeb and his SoS mistress did in Florida in 2000 to make what would have been a 3-4 point Gore victory a razor’s edge loss as an example) and if Trump went down screaming he’d get even more attention than he does now as a third party candidate – AND his voters wouldn’t begrudge him forsaking his pledge.
I think if you’re a GOP elder you’re carefully assessing now whether Trump can pull it off in the general and also assessing whether, despite whatever promises this guy has made on the stump, you can cut a deal with him now to get what you want if he wins.
Guess we’d have to assess each of the possible scenarios that would lead Trump to mount an IND run. At this point, I can’t see how he loses the GOP nomination without a self-inflicted mortal wound. Or a well aimed stone from a “David.”
Fixing one state in the GE when all the other states vote on the same day is easy compared to what it would take to fix multiple primaries and caucuses over several months without being somewhat quickly detected. Narrow wins and narrow losses throughout the primary season could conceivably lead to a brokered convention (the wet dream of some political junkies) where Trump could lose out. Does he go IND at that point? The media might then cover him to paint him as a sore-loser-man. Would be out of character for Trump to drag a loser sign around his neck in public.
But he always frankly and emphatically cited ‘leverage’ on this subject; I wonder what he gets in return? Besides the obvious benefit of having pantsed an entire political party.
Inoculation from charges by the party and other candidates that he’s nothing but a vanity candidate. That could be worth a couple of poll points now and more if he takes IA, NH, and SC or two out of the three.
The original article has this:
My guess is that someone is telling Trump he can win; that’s his only apparent weakness, appeals to his vanity. Do you think he can win the nomination? And the general election? Because that’s the criteria. Six weeks ago he was an 80:1 long-shot.
I sense the ‘base’ is prepared to go down in flames, taking their wicked GOP overlords with them, in an act of noisy defiance. Yet these warmed-up leftovers of Wallace’s Southern Democrats, AKA the ‘tea party’, are nibbling treats from Trump’s hand like spaniels. I’m long popcorn futures and congratulating myself on following politics for a decade just so I could properly enjoy this.
At this point, there aren’t many paths to someone other than Trump winning the GOP nomination.
As for whether or not he can win the general election, it depends on the “fundies.” If they don’t hold out on him as long as they did Romney and give him carte blanch to do whatever it takes to win the general, he’ll have the freedom to choose a VP that is very acceptable to authentic independents that can be snookered. Someone like Brian Sandoval. Otherwise he’ll give them all the red meat they demand and they’ll lose big time.
it’s a meaningless pledge, the GOP got played
Now his next move is to demand the other candidates do the same, an arrow aimed at Jeb. Yes, Jeb.
Suppose for a moment that the two candidates with momentum, rather than the establishment darlings, pull it off, and we get Trump vs. Saunders. What the repubs need then, if it looks like Trump would lose that fight, which is how I would bet, is a centrist who can pull a couple of swing states, Then neither gets an electoral majority and the election goes to the House.
So Jeb runs as the sane moderate against the two goofballls. The media establishment will cream its zipper over this and so, frankly, would a lot of the democratic establishment, though I would not expect open support from Clinton, because I won’t be the only one to figure out that a hung election goes to the Republican house.
Additionally, I assume Jeb could carry Florida. A couple of other states don’t seem out of the question. I guess it’s state by state, but either he can win with a plurality, or there’s a runoff, which he almost certainly would win in any state near the middle, as each party’s base would find the candidate of the other unthinkable.
If we’re going to fantasize, why not Trump (R), Sanders (D), Carson (I), and Clinton (I)?
because Clinton would be running to throw the election to the Republican House, wrecking her family’s legacy to no great benefit to her. Carson is drawing from the same well as Trump, but less effectively. I don’t see how he can carry a state, so all he could do is damage Trump a little. No purpose.
I don’t know. Clinton might just win in such a four way match-up.
Carson isn’t drawing from the racist/anti-immigrant well — Trump appears to own that one at this point. Carson and Huckabee are drawing from the same well and so far, Carson has more than twice what Huck has, but Huck’s white Xtain soldiers are probably out of reach for Carson.
For Clinton to actually win and not just throw the election to the House, she would need an absolute majority of the electoral college. Saunders would only need to carry few states to put that out of reach. Barring unforeseeable crisis or scandal, I don’t see the scenario where Saunders defeats Clinton in the primary only to get completely shut out by her in the general.
I was merely playing with a seemingly improbable scenario. But it might not be as impossible as you suggest. A GOP split in red states could leave Clinton as the winner. It would be weird, but interesting.
Reince Priebus type-cast as Neville Chamberlain.
tracking GOP primary numbers, check out the latest YouGov/Economist national poll.
So I guess this means that Jeb Bush and all the others have sworn to endorse Donald Trump should he win the nomination?
That signature means as much as the sweat on the underside of my ball-sac. Less, actually, since I can wipe that sweat off. Trump could sign a contract with his own blood and promise to let the entire Republican caucus come over and gang-fuck his daughter. It means jack-squat. They don’t own shit. How do you imagine they’d enforce it? Will they say bad things about him on Faux News? Will Uncle Tom Lemon get up on CNN and denounce him for insufficient loyalty to the Flat Tax? Maybe Maddow will repeat herself FOUR times instead of three?
No luck, homey; this is the guy the Republicans have been pining for.
Charming.
BWA HA HA AH AH AH HA HA HA HA HA
………………………………………………………………………
How Trump Outsmarted the GOP
The real estate magnate didn’t just pledge his loyalty to the Republican Party. The GOP pledged itself to Trump.
By Jim Newell
And though Trump has signed this piece of paper saying he will and won’t do certain things next year, he has not signed any piece of paper requiring him to disavow the unorthodox nationalist, protectionist, tax increase-supporting agenda with which he’s carved his sizable lane. The Republican Party, however, has now committed itself to supporting this agenda, which goes against decades of its own dogma, if Trump is able to pull off the nomination. Most of today’s news has been framed as Trump signs pledge to support eventual nominee. Another way to look at it is Establishment Republican candidates pledge to support Donald Trump. Trump has not pledged to incorporate into his candidacy any of the cheerier tones or traditional Republican policies that the GOP establishment would like to see from him. The Republican Party, though, has agreed to incorporate Trump.
In bringing his politics into the fold, the GOP has also handed Trump a shield just when he might need it. Jeb Bush’s campaign has begun the offensive against Trump’s political past, putting together a montage of Trump over the years stating that he’s pro-choice, a friend and admirer of Hillary Clinton’s, and an advocate for a single-payer health care system–all delivered with the same phony conviction that he wields now to emphasize the opposite. Now, when Bush or whoever else uses these attacks against Trump on the trail or at the next debate, Trump can fire right back: Didn’t you see Reince Priebus come to my office? Didn’t you see me just pledge my support to the Republican nominee? If I were a liberal, why would I do that?
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/09/donald_trump_s_loyalty_pledge_to_th
e_republican_party_how_the_real_estate.html