Fractured Republican Candidates Take Back Promise That They’ll Support the Presidential Nominee

Back in September of last year — happier times for the Republican party — all of the GOP presidential candidates signed a loyalty pledge agreeing to support the party's eventual nominee. On Tuesday night, that pledge, which was already tattered, was shredded before a live television audience.

At a CNN town hall in Wisconsin on Tuesday night, the three remaining Republican candidates — Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and John Kasich — all effectively indicated that they would rather jump off a bridge than have to support whoever wins the Republican nomination.

When CNN's Anderson Cooper asked Trump if he still pledges to support the Republican nominee — even if it isn't him — Trump was characteristically blunt. "No, I don't anymore," Trump said. "No, we'll see who it is."

"I have been treated very unfairly" by the Republican "establishment," he added.

Kasich and Cruz also walked back their loyalty pledges, albeit less enthusiastically than Trump.

"If the nominee is somebody that I think is really hurting the country and dividing the country, I can't stand behind them," Kasich told Cooper Tuesday.

Cruz also declined to say that he would absolutely support the GOP nominee. "I'm not in the habit of supporting someone who attacks my wife and attacks my family," Cruz said, in reference to Trump's threat to "spill the beans" on Cruz's wife Heidi last week. Trump later retweeted an unflattering photo of Heidi Cruz, comparing it to a professional shot of Melania Trump, after which Cruz called him a "sniveling coward".

"Nominating Donald Trump would be an absolute train wreck," the Texas senator added on CNN Tuesday. "I think it would hand the general election to Hillary Clinton."

Trump responded that he was just fine without Cruz's backing. "I'm not asking for his support," Trump said. "I want the people's support."

The fact that none of the Republican candidates said they would wholeheartedly support their party's nominee is the latest sign of just how deeply fractured the party has become. Now that it appears increasingly likely that Trump will actually win the nomination, taking the votes of many of the Republican party's base of supporters, party leaders are in a full-fledged panic about what that might do to the party's chance of survival.

Veteran Republican pollster Frank Luntz summed up that panic on Twitter last night. "That sound you just heard is [Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus] having a heart attack," Luntz wrote after Trump said he wouldn't support the Republican nominee. "If Trump turns on the GOP, the GOP is dead."

Priebus initially asked the candidates to sign the loyalty pledge in order to prevent Trump from running as a third party candidate if he loses the primary election, potentially splitting the Republican party's loyal voters between the businessman and the party nominee. If Trump turns to a third party bid, the thinking goes, they're essentially handing the election to Democrats.

Trump didn't specifically address whether he'd break the second part of the pledge, promising not to pursue a third-party bid, however.

The pledge read: "I [name] affirm that if I do not win the 2016 Republican nomination for president of the United States I will endorse the 2016 Republican presidential nominee regardless of who it is. I further pledge that I will not seek to run as an independent or write-in candidate nor will I seek or accept the nomination for president of any other party."

Now, that agreement looks like a quaint reminder of the time, just eight months ago, when the Republican party agreed to get along.

The day after he signed the pledge, Trump told reporters that he'd largely agreed to the document's terms because he was so confident that he will win the nomination. "The best way for the Republicans to win is if I win the nomination and go directly against whoever they happen to put up. And for that reason, I have signed the pledge," he said at the time.

At the town hall on Tuesday, Kasich summed up his own — and his fellow Republican candidates — buyer's remorse about the agreement to support their eventual nominee. "All of us shouldn't even have answered that question," Kasich said.

Follow Olivia Becker on Twitter: @oliviaLbecker