Florida's Republican Party had planned to make a collective pledge to endorse whoever won the party's primary election in 2024. It's now decided to scrap this pledge, an outcome that reportedly helps Donald Trump, inasmuch as it acknowledges that he is now overwhelmingly likely to win. Florida governor Ron DeSantis is, as usual, vaguely humiliated.
Gruters, a former chairman of the Florida GOP, made a motion to remove the language and won out in a voice vote by an "overwhelming" margin, he told CNN. "Common sense prevailed at the Republican Party of Florida tonight," Gruters said. The vote by the state GOP's executive committee took place during the organization's quarterly meeting in Orlando, an event that should have been a celebration of the party's recent electoral successes and a chance to lay the groundwork for the campaign to keep Florida red in 2024.
When asked by Megyn Kelly to join his rivals in pledging to support the eventual winner, Trump himself told her no and asked "Why would I?" A lot of Republicans still don't want to accept that Trump doesn't see himself as a party man. Having to maintain a fiction he merrily ignores puts the rest of the GOP pack at a disadvantage, which is funny because none of them have any advantages to speak of.
