Posted on 08/26/2012 6:40:10 PM PDT by Bigtigermike
Zeke Miller is reporting that a set of changes to the convention rules pushed through by Mitt Romney’s team is raising a few hackles among the delegates and could potentially lead to a squabble on the convention floor. The modifications in question deal – among other things – with the method used to select and approve the individual delegates from each state.
Frustration over changes to the Republican Party’s rules pushed through by the Romney Campaign on Friday may lead to a fight on the floor of the Republican National Convention on Monday.
The Convention Committee on Rules took a number of steps on Friday to weaken the power of state conventions and state parties, while consolidating the power of presidential candidates in the nominating process. Some of the changes — to require that delegations from statewide caucuses and primaries to the convention adhere to the will of voters — weakened the hand of insurgent-type candidates but have been well received by the committee. But a change allowing presidential candidates the right to vet their own delegates to the national convention has many state party officials up in arms — and they are planning to bring it to the convention floor.
The change, pushed by the Romney campaign's top lawyer Ben Ginsburg originally allowed candidates to select all the delegates bound to them in state contests. Now it allows candidates to refuse the delegate, requiring another in his or her stead to be selected by the state.
"The bottom line is that the change adopted today essentially allows the Presidential campaigns to pick there own delegates, which makes it a complete insider's ballgame and allows a bunch of Washington D.C. consultants to decide who does and doesn't get to be a delegate," said South Carolina delegate Drew McKensist
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
Agreed! In fact, this probably has less to do with the Paulbots than with the Tea Party seriously challenging the Establishment in 2016 and beyond and Mitt and the Good ol Boys trying to circumvent and stop any attempt of them gaining any realfoot hold in the party. People need to pay attention to what’s going on
“... or weed out the Paulbots who dishonestly ran on the Romney slate.”
Exactly.
PaulBots engaged in subterfuge and fraud by refusing to do what they are bound to do as delegates, and now the insiders want to ruin it for everyone because of PaulBot shenanigans.
The only silver lining is Ron Paul wont be running in 2016 ...
Santorum supporters who participated in the caucus process see the problem with this new proposal. Frankly, it is outrageous.
I’ve tangled with people who LAST WEEK insisted that Romney could be dumped in the convention. I dont know what koolaid they are drinking, but its strong brew. They have no clue about how the process works nor any respect for how the Republican party operates nor the actual will of the vast majority of primary voters. And at the end of the day, the more extreme ones will vote 3rd party anyway - so why insist on going to a Republican convention if you aren’t one?!?
If candidates want to weed out such people, I cant blame them.
I don’t see why 2016 is any concern before 2012 has been dealt with. One would think that after this yeas snafu, 2016 would be wide open for debate.
Sigh!!! What’s so hard in figuring it out that this is planned for the future - whether it’s for Mitt or Jeb or whoever in the establishment circle, they are setting it up for down the road
“Now it allows candidates to refuse the delegate, requiring another in his or her stead to be selected by the state.”
This is unacceptable.
I am willing to believe that this change was instituted simply to keep the Paulbots and their ilk from promising to vote one way and really voting another. However, the “unintended” consequence of this rule change is certainly to keep out anyone that the GOP-e does not accept. So this is unacceptable to me, and I hope to my fellow FReepers.
Who do we complain to? How can we make our non-delegate voices heard on this issue? (And we’d better do it now before this new rule gets cemented into place!!) Who is familiar with rules & procedures and can tell us what to do about this? Please comment and let us know!
We have millions of Republican voters who were taught as chillun' that they needed to vote Democrat.
My comment is not directed at those people AND YOU KNOW IT!
We no longer need, nor have much room for RINOs who claim to be Republican but then do the old reacharound with the Democrat professionals, or who were Democrat professionals ~ they simply are not needed.
At some point you go with what you got and quit taking in strays, or feating Quislings.
Our primaries must be closed in both ways. The voters must be Republicans, and the candidates must be Republicans of unimpeachable character, reputation and history.
At a minimum should you be a public office holder who ran as a Republican we ought to expect that you not also be a Democrat party donor ~ for example.
The Tea Party in Texas has been very successful in taking over GOP positions at the precinct, county and higher levels. Believe me, Texas TEA party delegates won’t sit still for being supplanted by GOP-e hacks!!!
“If that happens then it’s best to prepare to startup our own “second” party”
I believe Sarah mentioned something about a 3rd party the other day. She has more foresight than any of the romneybots.
She actually sees where the RNC “elites” are trying to herd the little people who MUST vote for them.
“”The bottom line is that the change adopted today essentially allows the Presidential campaigns to pick there own delegates, which makes it a complete insider’s ballgame and allows a bunch of Washington D.C. consultants to decide who does and doesn’t get to be a delegate,” said South Carolina delegate Drew McKensist “
There’s really no point in having primary elections if the campaigns can’t choose their own delegates. Nobody wants to go back to the era of the smoke filled rooms other than delusional Paulistas. There’s nothing to see here.
“Like it or not they are NOT all burnouts or kooks”
Yeah, some of them are libertines, conspiratorialists, and anarchists.
I must agree with you there. Open primaries are BS.
FMCDH(BITS)
In Wisconsin, delegates are elected in district caucuses. They are expected to vote for the candidate that won the primary. They of course could do otherwise, but the people that get elected in the district caucuses are not likely to vote against the will of the people. Is that not the way it works everywhere?
First, if Ron Paul delegates are our defense, I’d be very worried. Next thing you know, we’ll have all sorts of weird things in our platform.
Second, it’s hardly likely that anything that happens at the 2012 convention will change the rules for 2016, which will be set prior to that phase, just like the 2012 rules were put in place after 2008 ended, and just prior to 2012, by the RNC and Steele.
Third, the Tea Party doesn’t need rules that allow delegates to pretend to be for a candidate, but actually be supporters of other candidates who will barely stay loyal to the official winner through the first ballot.
In fact, the Tea Party almost needs the rules to be strengthened in this area, so that if a conservative candidate wins a primary, they can be guaranteed that the delegates they end up “winning” are loyal to them, not party hacks who will stab them in the back.
I agree with you on that point, that sometimes the rules we have to put in place to take care of those who would so brazenly abuse the process end up hurting everybody.
You go to a typical convention, and listen to all the people talking about things. What you’ll almost never hear is people questioning whether those who claim to support a candidate are actually lying. It’s just something nobody thinks anybody would do.
So, a guy shows up at a caucus in Iowa, and he says “I’m the Santorum Guy for this caucus. If Santorum didn’t actually find a guy for that particular caucus, who is going to doubt the guy? And so, the guy gets picked by the santorum supporters. And he shows up at the next level caucus, and he’s voting for Ron Paul. Surprise Surprise.
Hey, if the people who show up on primary day, or caucus day, actually WANT ron paul delegates, that’s fine. That’s how the process works. But a LOT of people are shocked to find out that they thought they were voting for some canddidate, and instead the delegate they selected is voting against their interests.
Well, you should be very worried because they ARE!
In case you haven't noticed, the GOP-E is taking a victory lap over the TEA Party right now, and planning its ultimate funeral. Romney is THE nominee, in spite of everything that has happened since 2008. Need I say anything more?
I’m thinking this is a response to Ron Paul’s trying to stack the deck with his delegates.
Romney is our nominee BECAUSE of what happened during the Republican Primary. He is our nominee because, for whatever reason, a majority of those who bothered to take part in the republican primary process decided to make him our nominee.
You can blame the GOP-E, or whatever you want to blame for the choices made by the electorate, but the electorate is the reason Romney is our nominee.
Ron Paul ran for the office, and attracted next to no support. He only managed to “win” when he was able to take over sparsely attended caucuses that controlled minor numbers of delegates. And he only managed to LOOK like he was winning in other places because his supporters pretended to support other candidates so they could be elected to move on in the process.
We could have picked Rick Perry (as one freeper says, a convert from the Democrat party). We could have picked Michelle Bachman (again, apparently a convert, although I don’t know how, and others call her crazy). We could have picked Hermann Cain, a guy who never held any public office, and never ran anything bigger than a small-cap company, and who cut and ran when the going got tough.
We could have picked Newt Gingrich, a man widely considered a turncoat to the cause by the time this process started, and who, having become the conservative darling, promptly threw away his momentum by attacking capitalism.
Or we could have chosen Rick Santorum, a good man who was crushed in his last senate race, and who, when he became the only guy who could beat Romney, was visciously attacked by Gingrich supporters to ENSURE that Santorum didn’t get momentum, because they were certain that Gingrich had some strategy of skipping multiple contests so he could regain momentum or something.
Or I guess we could have picked Ron Paul, a libertarian who has much in common with the OWS folks, although he’s also got some great positions on many issues.
And there was Pawlenty, a boring conservative with a great record who was yawned out of the race. Or Paul Ryan, who was laughed out before he got a chance to start. Heck, there were 18 people who registered at some point to run for the office.
But you know, none of those people were able to get any real traction. The conservatives never decided it was important to rally behind one conservative. Many were still hoping (heck, many ARE still hoping) for the white knight Sarah Palin to enter the race and solve their problems.
No matter how much Romney screws us, he will govern more conservatively than people here at FR claimed. He has certainly not been dissapointing in his first major decision. He won’t be conservative enough, I’m not sure anybody would be, but Romney certainly won’t be. But he’s not Rudy Giuliani. And he’s not Mike Huckabee.
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