Treat the RNC’s ‘Pledge’ with the Contempt It Deserves

By Noah Rothman

Friday, June 16, 2023

 

The Republican National Committee is struggling to reassert its dominance over a party that has lost all respect for its organizational apparatus.

 

This week, former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson’s presidential campaign reached out to the RNC with the request that it amend one of its primary qualifications for candidates seeking to participate in sanctioned debates: the demand that participants sign a pledge in support of the eventual Republican presidential nominee.

 

Hutchinson’s campaign reportedly related its candidate’s trepidation over the prospect of backing Donald Trump if he emerges as the nominee and is convicted of the federal charges pending against him before the election. “I’m not going to vote for him if he’s a convicted felon,” Hutchinson previously said. In the call, which Politico described as “contentious,” Hutchinson’s request was rejected.

 

Politico’s characterization of the call was confirmed by the tone of the statement RNC senior adviser Richard Walters produced in its wake. The GOP’s presidential aspirants are only “being asked to respect the decision of Republican primary voters and support the eventual nominee,” Walters said. “Candidates who are complaining about this to the press should seriously reconsider their priorities and whether they should even be running.”

 

But it’s not just Hutchinson who has expressed reservations about the viability of the RNC pledge if it means stifling criticisms of Trump. “I’ll be on the debate stage,” said former New Jersey governor Chris Christie earlier this month, “and I will take the pledge that the RNC puts in front of me just as seriously as Donald Trump did eight years ago.” Which is to say, not at all. Christie has a point.

 

The idea of a “pledge” was conceived in the first place by former RNC chairman Reince Priebus in early 2015, when conventional Republicans feared that the relative newcomer to Republican politics might campaign against the eventual Republican nominee or even run against him or her as a third-party candidate. Trump signed the pledge in August 2015. But when pressed about his commitment, Trump insisted that its terms did not bind him.

 

“No, I don’t anymore,” Trump said when asked if he would back a Republican presidential nominee that wasn’t him. “No, we’ll see who it is.” The eventual nominee of 2016 went out of his way to insist that his competitors for that nomination didn’t need to support him either. The remaining candidates in the race for the Republican nomination joined Trump in abrogating the promise they had made.

 

To the extent that the GOP filed in lockstep behind Trump in the end, it had nothing to do with any toothless piece of paper but with the political dynamics that prevailed within the Republican Party and among its voters. That dynamic may still pertain in 2024 if Trump is nominated for the White House for a third time. But it will have nothing to do with any pledge.

 

The Republican primary environment is anarchic — the RNC has seen to that by sacrificing much of its authority over the party. The organization doesn’t produce a party platform statement articulating the GOP’s beliefs. It doesn’t impose discipline on its nominees to high office because it can’t. The organization can coordinate fund-raising and organize conventions, but that is about it. The party’s primary organizing committee abdicated the central role it used to play in determining the GOP’s representatives.

 

Republican presidential aspirants should adopt Christie’s approach: Sign the pledge and treat it with the same contempt Donald Trump will almost certainly reserve for it if he is denied the nomination. If anyone believes the RNC would invent some mechanism to enforce its primacy over candidates, imagine how the committee would respond if enforcing the pledge risked irritating the party’s base voters.

 

If the rules are only enforced pending the approval of an angry mob, there are no rules at all. Christie, Hutchinson, and Trump recognize that. The rest of the Republican Party’s candidates should follow their leads.