There is a solid argument to be made that forcing Donald Trump to sign the Republican Pledge was step one in this RNC/GOPe strategy. He’s now locked in the Thunderdome!  
When you fully understand the scope of how the Republican National Committee organized the entire road map to elect Jeb Bush, you begin to understand why Reince Priebus needed to lock the door behind Trump before unleashing the thugs upon him.
Hundreds of millions will be spent on this RNC/GOPe effort to destroy Trump. It will be unlike any scorched earth campaign ever witnessed.  The brutality of the intended targeting is so severe, even the New York Times is willing to broadcast the bloodbath.

New York Times –  Quiet conversations have begun in recent weeks among some of the Republican Party’s biggest donors and normally competing factions, all aimed at a single question: How can we stop Donald Trump?

Republican strategists and donors have assembled focus groups to test negative messages about Mr. Trump. They have amassed dossiers on his previous support for universal health care and higher taxes. They have even discussed the creation of a “super PAC” to convince conservatives that Mr. Trump is not one of them.

But the mammoth big-money network assembled by Republicans in recent years is torn about how best to defuse the threat Mr. Trump holds for their party, and haunted by the worry that any concerted attack will backfire.

In phone calls, private dinners and occasional consultations among otherwise rivalrous outside groups, many have concluded that Mr. Trump’s harsh manner and continued attacks on immigrants and women were endangering the party’s efforts to compete in the general election. Yet after committing hundreds of millions of dollars to shape the Republican primary contest and groom a candidate who can retake the White House, the conservative donor class is finding that money — even in an era of super PACs and billion-dollar presidential campaigns — is a devalued currency in the blustery, post-policy campaign fashioned by Mr. Trump, driven not by seven-figure paid advertising campaigns but by Twitter feuds and unending free publicity.

[…]  And there is no certainty of success: A group identified with the Republican establishment would risk ending up in a war with Mr. Trump, while a new group — such as a political nonprofit to which other donors and organizations could secretly funnel cash — would play into Mr. Trump’s comments about lobbyists and corporations scheming to prop up his rivals. Mr. Trump also has begun to preview such attacks.

This week, he lambasted both Karl Rove, a Crossroads co-founder, and the Club for Growth, which he said once asked him for a million-dollar contribution. (A club spokesman said that Mr. Trump asked for the meeting with Mr. McIntosh, which took place in May.)

“Many Super Pacs, funded by groups that want total control over their candidate, are being formed to ‘attack’ Trump,” Mr. Trump said Tuesday on Twitter. “Remember when u see them.”  (read more)

PREPARE FOR WAR !

Just a Reminder, this is an insurgency. – The modern enemy of Wall Street is Main Street vulgarians. The enemy of the RNC/GOPe is not Democrats, it’s Grassroots Conservatives, more vulgarians.
The Republican Party, and the Republican media apparatus, view us as their enemy. We are the enemy they need to protect themselves from:

States that have primaries on or after March 15 will be winner-take-all states.

That’s important because another RNC rule change requires that a candidate must win a majority of delegates in eight or more states before his or her name may be presented for nomination at the 2016 Republican National Convention.