Trump Vows Not To Mount Third-Party Run

For once, I will write something positive about Donald J. Trump and the fact that he has signed a pledge that if he is not the Republican presidential nominee, he will support the actual nominee.
One of my biggest problems with the Donald is that for all this time, he either flirted with and or left the door wide open that if he does not win the GOP presidential nod, he would be open to running as a third-party candidate. And before any Trumpette tries to deny such a thing, remember that he did run a half-assed campaign for the Reform party nomination in the 2000 election.
As an aside, imagine that it was he and not eventual Reform party nominee, Pat Buchanan, that caused trouble in Palm Beach county during the infamous 36 days of confusion in which eventually George W. Bush won Florida and the 23 electoral votes and the presidency.
But I digress.
It was not out of the realm of possibility that the Donald would keep that option in his back pocket. And in reality he probably could still do so if the hard core demands it.
But signing a pledge and showing this

for all to see would hurt him substantially with a certain amount of supporters if he chose to still threaten or indeed after someone else wins the GOP nomination, run third-party.
It appears that some of the hard core may have be dealt their first disappointment at the hands of their political messiah. Some feel that the Donald sold out to the eeeeevvvvviiiiilllll GOP establishment and their Snidely Whiplash, Reince Priebus.
But for some real GOP history, after a contentious and bitter campaign between then former California governor Ronald Reagan and incumbent GOP President Gerald Ford, Mr. Reagan backed Mr. Ford as the GOP candidate. No, Mr. Reagan didn't campaign for Mr. Ford, but his endorsement was enough for some of Mr. Reagan's supporters to at least cast their vote for the battered incumbent president.
And that is all I would expect from the Donald.
Some who have lost became good if not better surrogates for the winning candidate than that particular candidate in the last two elections.
In all honesty it is the very least I want to see from the Donald. If he believes that this election is about his slogan, Making America Great Again, and he should not be the GOP candidate, not undermining the actual nominee and encouraging that nominee to indeed Make America Great Again would show me it is not all about the Donald and it is indeed about the United States.
Of course anyone who runs for president has to have a certain amount of stones to do so. The Donald has that and then some.
By signing a pledge not to be a sore loser, Donald Trump may be indeed a serious candidate for the GOP nomination for president.