Who Could Blame These Republicans For Saying They Can't Support Each Other?

The Republican candidates have been out on the road with each other for months-- seems like years-- and have gotten to know each other better than any of us will ever know them. They're all rivals, that's for sure. Cruz, in fact, just started running a series of pretty nasty attack ads in Wisconsin against Kasich. Watch:



But that's politics. You won't find Cruz ever saying he wouldn't vote for Kasich if Kasich is the party nominee and you won't even find Kasich saying he wouldn't vote for Cruz if Cruz is the nominee. The only candidates who would ever back Trump, on the other hand, are candidates being promised jobs like Chris Christie and Dr. Ben. Trump really is beyond the pale for any serious conservative-- or for many serious Americans. Even someone as deranged as Trump surrogate Ann Coulter-- who had publicly called for more violence at Trump rallies-- is reportedly starting to sour on him, admitting that he's "mental" (and "lowbrow").

Early this morning Maggie Haberman reported that "The Republican National Committee’s loyalty pledge died on Tuesday night. It was nearly eight months old." Did anyone believe it was worth the parchment it was written on?

At a town-hall-style event hosted by CNN, Donald J. Trump said he would not promise to support the eventual nominee if it was not him, despite a loyalty oath that he and 16 other candidates signed in September.

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas also would not explicitly vow to back the nominee, in his case if it was Mr. Trump, saying only that Mr. Trump would not get that far. Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio was more explicit, saying that if the nominee was someone who “is really hurting the country and dividing the country,” then he just wasn’t sure. Pressed by the host, Anderson Cooper, on whether he was saying he thinks that’s what Mr. Trump is doing, Mr. Kasich declined to elaborate.

The reason the pledge existed in the first place was to prevent Mr. Trump walking out of the Republican contest and into a third-party candidacy. But the comments marked a fresh stage in the open warfare that has erupted in the past weeks, as Mr. Trump has moved closer to capturing the nomination of a party whose major leaders remain deeply troubled by his comments. The wounds in the party are becoming so deep that they may be impossible to heal in time for the general election campaign, no matter who the nominee is.

So now Trump feels "someone" is being "unfair" to him and he can honorably-- if such a concept even exists in his universe-- abandon his signed pledge. If Ryan is the nominee-- likely if the Establishment can steal the nomination at the convention-- will Trump run as a third party candidate? If he did, that would either throw the election to Bernie (or the establishment candidate if Democrats are foolish enough to nominate her) or throw it to the House of Representatives, where the incompetence and corruption of the DCCC will be put into a starker light. Or Trump could just urge his supporters to sit out the election, which would be so devastating that it would absolutely deprive the GOP of the ability to regain their Senate majority in the 2018 midterms (by giving the Democrats too much of a cushion now-- as states like North Carolina, Iowa, Arizona, Missouri, Arkansas, Indiana and Kentucky fall to the Democrats, along with the easy states that are looking more lost by the day already: Wisconsin, Illinois, New Hampshire, Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio). Under that scenario, even the House-- despite a totally incompetent DCCC-- could fall into the Democrats' hands, something otherwise unthinkable.

Asked by Anderson Cooper at the CNN townhall yesterday if he'd abide by his pledge to support whoever wins the Republican nomination, Trump responded "No, I don't anymore. I have been treated very unfairly" and referring to Cruz added, "I don't want his support.  I don't need his support. I want him to be comfortable." I bet Bernie or Hillary would love debating either Cruz or Trump. You think Trump is out of his mind? Watch Cruz: