Placing Party Before Country

For those who have not been following the utter crazy train that is the Republican Primaries, there's not even been one vote yet, but plenty of happenings.  Everyone but Huntsman has been at the top of the polls at one point or another; one candidate has already been forced to drop out because of sexual impropriety.   However, the other week, Rick Perry made news when he announced he was suing the Virginia GOP for not being placed on the primary ballot there due in part to a "loyalty oath".

Originally the way it was reported, it seemed that this oath to support the eventual Republican candidate for President was applicable only to the candidates themselves, in order to prevent people from being jerks about losing.  That is not how it is being reported now.  The Richmond Times-Dispatch is now reporting that in order to vote in the Republican Primary in Virginia, all voters must sign a loyalty oath to the Republican Party and its eventual candidate for President. 

According to GOP officials in Virginia, in the Times-Dispatch piece, this is a rule by the national party offices for states who do not require closed primaries; the flexibility though, is up to the state.  In the Republican Primaries in 2000, the oath said that the undersigned promised not to vote in another primary that day; this satisfied the national rules.  It did not require an oath of loyalty to the Party and to the Party candidate...but it nearly did.  The state wouldn't allow the GOP to run the loyalty oath it wanted to in 2000, which made a person pledge to support all Republican nominees in the next election, according to the Washington Post.

This is setting a dangerous precedent, one which has been set before in history, and one which we are hopefully not about to set again.

The only pledge that an American citizen owes in voting is to his or her country, not to a political party and nor to a particular candidate.  On August 2, 1934, a man changed the loyalty oath to his military from supporting the nation to supporting an individual, and the world would never be the same.  Let us learn from the mistakes of our past, lest we repeat them again.  An American's duty is to the United States of America, not to the idealogues of any movement.