Loyalty is a one-way dead-end street

By BRUCE LOWITT

The Republican Party, desperate to guarantee its self-immolation following the 2024 presidential election, has added riders to its loyalty pledge requiring signers to support any candidate found guilty of espionage or other major felonies or attending a drag-queen story hour, and to contribute at least $10-million to his or her campaign or legal defense funds.

The pledge, known as Typhon, Demogorgon, Sekhmet and various other names, also demands that any signers who later renounce their oath be banished to Tartarus after having their tongue ripped out and their wallet permanently sewn shut.

Michael Langone, a psychologist and executive director of the Florida-based International Cultic Studies Association, said the GOP appears to have devolved into a cult.

He noted that, among other things a cult “expresses zealous, unquestioning devotion to its leader, discourages doubt and dissent, has an us-vs.-them mentality, teaches that the ends justifies the means and is preoccupied with making money. So what we have is actually two cults here,” Langone said. “One, the Republican Party. Two, Donald Trump, a cult all unto himself.”

Trump, studying the loyalty pledge in the ballroom at Mar-a-Lago, refused to sign it. “Where’s my name?” he growled. “If it doesn’t have my name on it and only my name it’s not worth the paper it’s written on because I’m loyal only to myself and everyone else should be. And speaking of paper,” he said, pulling a sheet out of a box of rumpled golf shirts, “did you see this one about Iran?”

Ronna McDaniel, the leader of the RNC, taking time out from her daily denials that she’s Ronald McDonald despite wearing red-and-white-striped socks and clown shoes, said in a moment of extraordinary irony that signing the pledge should be a “no-brainer.”

Given that a number of declared GOP candidates fall into that category, she said, “I can’t understand why they wouldn’t want to put their John Hancock on such a document – assuming they understand that they just can’t write ‘John Hancock’ and that they’d have to sign their actual name.”

Dallas businessman Ryan Binkley, not to be confused with a pacifier, and right-wing radio host Larry Elder, both expressed excitement at being asked to sign the loyalty oath until they were informed that it had nothing to do with the Oath Keepers. Elder later pointed out that he already is a member of the far-right antigovernment militia and thought signing the loyalty oath would be redundant.

Among 11 other declared Republican candidates, Perry Johnson failed to prove he can sign his name after failing to sign the papers that would have qualified him to run for governor of Michigan last year.

“It wasn’t my fault,” Johnson said. “The top of the first sheet asked me for my last name and I didn’t have any other name before this one, which kind of confused me, and when I called my kid sister Valerie and asked what my last name was she told me, ‘What it’s always been – Jackass,’ and so I put that down on the form and it got rejected. Go figure.”

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie also said he couldn’t sign a pledge “because I can’t see any paperwork below my belt. I need a mirror to read stuff and sometimes it comes out upside-down and where the hell am I supposed to sign my name?”

“Besides,” Christie added, “the loyalty pledge is a useless idea, just like the Pledge of Allegiance – you know, the ‘with liberty and justice for all’ part. None of us Republicans believe that, right?”