Donald Trump Promises not run third-party Campaign

Soaring in the polls, Donald Trump on Thursday promised to forgo a potential third-party White House run and back the eventual 2016 Republican nominee.

“I will be totally pledging my allegiance to the Republican Party and the conservative principles for which it stands,” he told reporters in Manhattan, holding up the signed document, “and we will go out and we will fight hard and we will win. We will win.”

The real estate mogul made his move as he continued to dominate the crowded GOP field.

A national Monmouth University survey of Republican and Republican-leaning voters released Thursday found Trump increasing his draw to 30%, up four points from early August.

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson charged into second place at 18% — and proved the only candidate who could beat Trump head-to-head. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush dropped four points and slid into a third-place tie with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at 8%.

“None of the establishment candidates is having any success in getting an anti-Trump vote to coalesce around them,” said Monmouth’s Patrick Murray.

 

Or as Trump himself put it, “Everybody that’s attacked me has gone down the tubes.”

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus late Wednesday began circulating the “loyalty” pledge, which asks candidates to back the winner of the primary and swear off running as an “independent or write-in” or the nominee of another party.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Bush and Carson all signed early Thursday. Trump signed after Priebus came to New York and met with him in person.

Priebus said during a Thursday appearance on Fox News Channel's "On the Record with Greta Van Susteren" that Trump "did the right thing" for party unity.

"Look, an independent run would be a death wish," Priebus said. "And we know it."

Trump, during the cycle’s first big TV debate last month, had refused to rule out an independent bid.

His pledge, while not legally binding, deprives critics of a potential line of attack in the Sept. 16 GOP debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California.

“A Trump third-party candidacy would elect a Democrat, because it would divide the GOP vote,” said Darrell West of the Brookings Institution.

Speaking to the media at his Trump Tower high-rise after signing the pledge, the front-runner belittled Bush, who has clashed with him on the hot-button issue of immigration and assailed his conservative street cred.

“I watched him this morning on television, and it’s a little bit sad,” Trump said dismissively. “Don’t forget: He was supposed to win. And he just doesn’t have the energy.”

Earlier, Bush said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that he had to laugh when he heard Trump had criticized him for speaking Spanish on the trail.

Bush, who is bilingual and whose wife is originally from Mexico, called Trump’s English-only broadside “bizarre” and at the same time “hurtful for a lot of people.”

Outside Trump Tower, protesters angry with the candidate's comments on immigration waved signs denouncing him as a racist. Some wore the white hoods and robes of the Ku Klux Klan to underscore their point.