Posted on 03/17/2016 12:42:33 PM PDT by VitacoreVision
Solomon Yue, one of the 168 members of the Republican National Committee (RNC) from Oregon, has promised to present a startling proposal to the RNC Standing Rules Committee when it meets in April: toss the archaic, contentious, 1,500-page RNC rule book in favor of Robert’s Rules of Order: “To make the convention more transparent, I will advocate ... adoption of Robert’s Rules of Order to replace the 1,500-page U.S. House rules to govern the convention.”
Yue is already picking up support for the idea, including that of Kansas RNC member Helen Van Etten, who said that “our party’s grass roots have been using [it] to conduct business at the county party, state party and national party levels for many years. Unlike the 1,500-page U.S. House rules, there are, in Robert’s [Rules], no surprises that will [cause] the kind of chaos [the national] media are predicting.”
Robert’s Rules has been used by civic associations, county boards, and state legislatures for years and, as noted by Ralph Hallow of the Washington Times, would “head off arcane maneuvers designed to deny Donald Trump the presidential nomination … to make it hard to forge in secrecy what voters might see as backroom deals to ‘steal’ the presidential nomination from Mr. Trump, the front-runner.”
Included in RNC's massive rule book is the “arcane” rule 40b, adopted by the Romney campaign in 2012 essentially to squelch any opposition from delegates committed to Ron Paul. As Joe Wolverton wrote in The New American at the time: “Maine’s Ron Paul delegates were roughly shoved out of the Republican Party’s quadrennial convention, and as a result of events surrounding the proposal and adoption of new rules to govern the presidential nomination process, every potential Republican presidential candidate with a message that doesn’t parrot the party line has been effectively ostracized. Forever.”
That rule says that only candidates with a majority of delegates from at least eight states can be nominated and put to a vote. In 2012, that ended Paul’s run, but it doesn’t apply in 2016 thanks to Trump’s successes across the land.
Back in December the GOP insiders attended a secret dinner held by RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, the details of which were leaked to the Washington Post by five people who were “familiar” with the meeting. In attendance were Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell; Ward Baker, executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee; Rob Simms, his counterpart at the National Republican Congressional Committee; Ron Kaufman, a RNC committee member and advisor to Mitt Romney; and Whit Ayres, an advisor to Senator Marco Rubio. Also in attendance was Vin Weber, an ally of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.
Speaking anonymously, the five confirmed the anxiety being felt by the GOP establishment at the recent and continuing success of the outsider, Donald Trump, and began to lay plans for handling a brokered convention if Trump failed to win on the first ballot. One topic was the 1976 Republican convention where Ronald Reagan challenged Gerald Ford on the floor prior to Ford’s winning the party’s nomination.
Another topic was Trump’s admitted ability to make back-room deals if that becomes necessary. Trump himself has admitted that he’ll be working at a disadvantage, not because of his ability to negotiate, but because the deck is stacked against him:
I’ll be disadvantaged. The dealmaking, that’s my advantage. My disadvantage is that I’d be going up against guys who grew up with each other, who know each other intimately, and I don’t know who they [all] are. That’s a big disadvantage.… These kind of guys stay close. They all know each other. They want each other to win.
Even Morton Blackwell, one of those members of the RNC, who has attended every GOP convention since 1972, tried to change rule 40b at a meeting back in January, but without success: “I attempted at the RNC’s January 2016 meeting in Charleston, South Carolina, to correct this outrageous, unfair, and counterproductive 2012 Romney power grab. I came close [but failed.]”
Blackwell reviewed just how the old-boy insider network works in order to make rules that keep insiders in power, concluding that they have the power, if they care to exercise it, to keep Trump from gaining the nomination.
And that is the key question. Not whether they will seriously consider tossing the rulebook in favor of Robert’s Rules, but whether they are willing to risk the scandal and the anger erupting from delegates favoring Trump when they discover, as Ron Paul’s people did in 2012, that they have had their right to vote at the convention neutered or eliminated altogether, thanks to some last-minute rule change.
Related article:
Republican Convention Rules Changes: How the Establishment Stole the GOP
It’s a fun thought-game, but anyone who goes into the convention with a significant lead in delegates will get the nomination.
The Aye’s have it.
They are trying to remove any accusations of cheating before they can even be made.
Sounds good to me. “Robert’s Rules” have been used in a lot of clubs of which I’ve been a member.
Mittens’ people wrote the rules to kill off an insurgency and favor someone like Jeb or maybe him if he made a future run.
What no one foresaw at the time was Trump. He turned their rules to his advantage.
Its his party now.
Don’t be fooled they want to change the rules so their candidates can even be balloted otherwise it will just be Trump and Cruz that qualify for any of the balloting. If they throw 40b out it will allow them to put up whoever they want and try to shut out both Cruz and Trump.
Hhmmm...Solomon’s my state committee man....may have to call him
Trump’s nuclear option: if they try to screw him he can switch to 3rd party or even a write-in and pull enough votes away from whomever the GOPe puts up to guarantee a Democrat win and blow up the Republican party for good.
History is not on your side. The GOP has had 8 contested conventions since 1860. In 5 of them, the eventual nominee was NOT the one who came into the convention with the most delegates.
When was the last time?
I don’t believe it can be done today.
Trump could also threaten to campaign for the GOPe’s primary opponents. Could you imagine how many RINOs would be on the street if Trump actively campaigned against them?
Trump will enter the convention with the requisite number of delegates. The math and momentum are in his side.
If he keeps bashing clintoon, his numbers will only improve.
Looks like Dewey in 1948.
Things have changed a lot since then.
History is not on your side. The GOP has had 8 contested conventions since 1860. In 5 of them, the eventual nominee was NOT the one who came into the convention with the most delegates.
And after the process they won’t be able to control the message. In those conventions they only needed to control a few newspapers then a few news organizations (paper, radio, tv). In this case if the loser is Trump, he and his supporters will be able to get their message out. His supporters wouldn’t have had much of a national voice even in 1976. Even if the party controls Trump so he’s not on TV every night bashing them, they won’t be able to shut down his supporters.
There’s an idea! I think Trump should tell the GOPe to get out of his way and he’ll raise his own GE money, then they can focus on keeping the House and Senate, and on downticket races.
They came close in 1976 - the only reason Ford beat Reagan was because he was the sitting president, and thus could promise more to the delegates than Reagan could. But he only won by 60 votes.
Or maybe it’s such a debilitating thing for the Party that they wouldn’t even do it for Reagan...
Though we both know the establishment fought Ronnie at every chance.
Maybe if Ford had had the less votes though. Hard to reject a sitting president for a candidate.
Because the primaries are strung out, the late ones will be an up or down referendum on Trump.
If those later states reject him knowing the stakes, he would have a much harder time being the nominee. If those states move in his direction, but he falls just sort of 1237, he’ll likely be put over the top by uncommitteds and released delegates.
This is probably just theory, because Trump seems almost certain to win outright.
Wouldn’t that make him run as an independent? He agreed not to run as an independent. At his last victory speech..i think that was it..he mentioned having had a discussion with McConnel, and Trump began to speak ..toss out there that is, the idea of unifying the republican party.
I think they’ll pull his strings to get him to support them even as they stab him in the back.
I know Trump isn’t stupid, but these politicians are corrupt to the bone. In my unsupported opinion, more so than the mob Trump is accused by the politicians of being in cahoots with!
I think the politicians ARE the ‘’mob’’.
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