TFG will not sign the pledge to support the party nominee and there nothing the RNC can do about it
TFG is not going to go away quietly. If TFG is primaried, it will be a nasty affair. TFG evidently has some oppo on DeathSantis and TFG will insult and attack anyone running against him. If TFG loses the GOP primary, TFG will either run as a third party or tell his voters to stay home.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/donald-trump-doesnt-go-quietly-rcna60560?cid=sm_npd_ms_tw_ma
What happened to the Republican Party is no mystery. The GOP knows it has a Trump problem. Indeed, since the former president announced his intention to run for president again in 2024, he’s made it far easier to jettison him into political orbit. Many Republican nonincumbents anointed by Trump — the celebrities, the neophytes, the soap-box agitators who wore their persecution complex on their sleeves — lost. Where MAGA candidates won, they did so narrowly while running far behind more conventional Republicans on the same ballot. His acolytes’ dismal performances, the grotesque company he keeps, and his ponderously lethargic campaign have given Republicans who pine for a post-Trump GOP all the ammunition they need.
But Trump has plenty of options at his disposal to defeat the Republican Party’s counterrevolutionaries. If the most salient argument against Trump among GOP voters is that he and his movement are electoral poison, Trump can convince his fellow Republicans that the GOP will suffer even worse losses if they abandon him. As Sen. Lindsay Graham explained last year, Trump could make the party stronger, but “he also could destroy it.” And what happens if he does not go quietly?
Trump’s tried-and-true tactic for inducing acquiescence among Republican Party elites would be to threaten an independent presidential bid if he seems likely to lose the nomination. That mere possibility produced a mad, humiliating scramble during his 2016 run. Then-Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus tried to hem Trump in by compelling him to sign a “pledge” in support of the GOP and its candidates — a document Trump treated with deserved contempt. Priebus’s threat of “consequences” for failing to live up to this loyalty oath was empty then and emptier now: There are no credible “consequences” attached to violation.
The same apprehension that paralyzed the party in 2016 could immobilize the GOP today if Trump threatens to bolt with his share of the Republican base. Even if that warning never materializes, Trump can still make the party's life miserable for its members. In fact, it’s hard to see how he doesn’t. .....
But Trump has plenty of options at his disposal to defeat the Republican Party’s counterrevolutionaries. If the most salient argument against Trump among GOP voters is that he and his movement are electoral poison, Trump can convince his fellow Republicans that the GOP will suffer even worse losses if they abandon him. As Sen. Lindsay Graham explained last year, Trump could make the party stronger, but “he also could destroy it.” And what happens if he does not go quietly?
Trump’s tried-and-true tactic for inducing acquiescence among Republican Party elites would be to threaten an independent presidential bid if he seems likely to lose the nomination. That mere possibility produced a mad, humiliating scramble during his 2016 run. Then-Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus tried to hem Trump in by compelling him to sign a “pledge” in support of the GOP and its candidates — a document Trump treated with deserved contempt. Priebus’s threat of “consequences” for failing to live up to this loyalty oath was empty then and emptier now: There are no credible “consequences” attached to violation.
The same apprehension that paralyzed the party in 2016 could immobilize the GOP today if Trump threatens to bolt with his share of the Republican base. Even if that warning never materializes, Trump can still make the party's life miserable for its members. In fact, it’s hard to see how he doesn’t.
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