How Cruz Took Down Trump: An Interview With a Delegate

The Huffington Post ^ | April 26, 2016 | by John A. Tures

[Oldeconomybuyer]

My local congressional district became one of those battlegrounds that we see playing out across the country, as Ted Cruz supporters outflank Donald Trump backers at the little-known, little-attended Republican Party meetings to select delegates to the national convention. Here's one delegate's story of how it all went down.

Q: Who won the district? If Trump won it, why didn't pro-Trump delegates win at the meeting?

A: The primary dictates how the delegates are to vote on the first ballot. It doesn't dictate who the people are that are elected to represent the convention body at the RNC.

Q: Did any Trump supporters show up? How did they take the results?

A: I would estimate that of all the delegates casting votes, approximately 20% to 25% were Trump supporters. They were understandably upset that their slate did not get approved by the convention body. I spent most of the morning explaining to the leader of their group exactly what was going on and how things were going to move forward. I wanted to make sure they were comfortable with understanding the process.

Q: Why do you think the results went down the way they did?

A: The delegates wanting to support Trump were just late getting involved in the process. I don't think the campaign fully understood how important the actual delegates could be if it came down to a brokered convention. Once it became obvious that the convention may go that route, it was too late to start the process. The delegate process started with mass precinct meetings in February. In February it looked like Trump would easily walk away with the nomination.

[Jim Noble]

The current “system”, more accurately a non-system, is a travesty.

It attempts to bridge two completely incompatible concepts or frameworks for how the end result should be achieved.

First (and quite respectable) is that each major party (both private organizations composed of paid and volunteer staff) should appoint delegates and convene every four years and that said convention, using reason and debate, should freely choose the nominees most likely to serve their interests (usually winning).

Second, and kind of novel, is the idea that (some) voters should choose the nominee, either by plurality or majority voting.

The attempt to meld these two opposing concepts into a smoothly-functioning system is a failure.

The biggest problem with the primary system is that there are no consistent qualifications for voting, and, worse, the qualifications to vote are not set by the parties but by the states in which the primaries are held. A primary system is under the control of often hostile state election bureaucracies rather than under the control of the parties.

[CapitalistCrusader]

Roughly 60% of republican voters DO NOT want Trump.

Are you serious?

Roughly 80% of republican voters DO NOT WANT CRUZ!!!

[Slyfox]

No. It is not code for a little club. The delegate process is well-known and the people who have been involved in it have done it for a long time. These people are the ones who have been working to get all the lower level candidates elected for years. They know the ropes. In fact, these people have been the best defense fighting the GOPe, so much so, that Karl Rove and his ilk hates their guts because they constantly interrupt the GOPe plans.

Good Trump tactic. Try to make the entire delegate process the nexus of evil just because they are doing what they are supposed to do and he can't get them to do his will and just hand the entire thing to him.

Obama did a similar thing in 2008, but he was much better at upsetting the applecart.

[PA-LU Student]

So you want to throw out the system set up by our founders?

Because if a direct democracy is good enough why do we even need a Federalist Republic? right?

There are major problems with democracy as a governing principle. The first and most important is that you are running over the rights and desires of the minority?
You know the way things are trending Conservatism may become that minority. Second, corruption becomes rampant, as special interests take control.

This allows a degree of separation from the voters, which can be influenced by who offers them the most stuff, from the very important task of picking our parties nominee.

Now before you start, I am not saying that we need to eliminate the democratic process, by which our country runs. To the contrary, I think we should leave voting in it, but like most cases involving power, it needs to be diffused and divided.

Be grateful, that the republican party still holds to those founding principles. Because it is those principles that give people like Trump and Cruz a shot at the presidency. The dems abandoned those principles, and results, there is no chance of an outsider gaining the nomination.

So, in the words of one of my economics text books for my Govt. 200 class, “before making changes you must now the initial consequences, but that is not enough it is also important to think about the secondary, and tertiary consequences of that action.”

[Jim Noble]

As long as the voters doing the vote are registered Republicans, why yes.

Being a "registered Republican" means nothing. That "qualification" does not mean you agree with the platform, support the party in a public way, work for the party, will be loyal to the nominee - it is meaningless.

[napscoordinator]

Oh I am confident he will win 5 states today, Indiana next Tuesday and California and New Jersey in June. This election was over after New York.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

The Electoral College serves a very different purpose than the delegate process

How so? If the GOP primary was direct democracy popular vote, all a candidate would need to do is campaign in large population states. Smaller states voters would be disenfranchised.

State delegations in the 19th century wanted to avoid the same large-state domination in the GOP primary.

That's a pretty straight pretzel.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

You don’t have a plan. END.

[dynoman]

Why is it people think man made rules can't be changed?? Amazing how people can be manipulated.

Look at this;

https://www.facebook.com/randall.joneslatinjuggalo/posts/1048238075247858?fref=nf&pnref=story

Most answer 40 or 96. Apply Occam's Razor . The correct answer to 8+11=? is 19. There is no other rational or logical answer. None.

We are not obligated to answer the last one wrong just because the middle two are wrong. 2+5=7 and 3+6=9.

Amazing how easily people can be influenced into wrong thinking - wrong answers. No amount of logical contortions will change the factual reality 8+11=19. And still so many will defy logic and reason and answer wrong. It's stunning.

[SamAdams76]

I get it, I get it. Us Trump supporters are just a bunch of dummies who don't understand the process. So if our votes get overturned later because we didn't understand that we had to do this and do that and show up at a certain place at a certain time, in order to get the right slate of delegates, than we have nobody but ourselves to blame if some sharp lawyer-politician shows up with an army of pencil pushers to get delegates that are loyal to him instead of Trump.

We are just a bunch of rubes and we deserve to lose because we don't understand the delegate process and we were dumb enough to think that all we had to do was cast our vote for Trump and get back to our jobs, because unlike career lawyer-politicians, we must make a real living. I get it.

However, it appears that supporters of Trump are about to have the last laugh. It seems that the Cruz supporters were so busy high-fiving and slapping themselves on the backs for outsmarting the Trump neophytes that they didn't notice the Trump Train that just rolled on top of them. After tonight, they are going to have to steal hundreds more delegates just to keep up with Trump and there just aren't that many out there left to steal.

Maybe the Cruz people should have focused more on EARNING the support of the people instead of STEALING the delegates assigned to represent them.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Roughly 80% of republican voters DO NOT WANT CRUZ!!!

I think it's closer to 70% but I won't quibble. However you've stumbled upon the problem. No candidate has earned a majority of either votes or delegates, and therefore it's likely there will be multiple ballots at the GOP convention.

[itsahoot]

The framers recognized that direct democracy leads to corruption.

And the system we have doesn't?

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Of course none of this will make sense to you

You are correct.

[dynoman]

It’s not about me personally. Making it personal is just a way to avoid the issue. END.

[sargon]

Maybe the Cruz people should have focused more on EARNING the support of the people instead of STEALING the delegates assigned to represent them.

Thanks. New tagline...

[SunkenCiv]

Same source:

Yes, Bernie Sanders Will Become President.

[CapitalistCrusader]

No candidate has earned a majority of either votes or delegates

This assumption is far from proven. There is one candidate who actually can accumulate a majority of the delegates before the convention.

[SoCalConservative]

I believe in the Electoral College because it prevents one’s vote being disenfranchised, just as you stated. Do you really believe that the process of choosing delegates in the primaries, especially in states with no vote whatsoever, is the same thing and serves the same purpose? It simply creates an uneven playing field. That’s a fact and irrefutable.

[dynoman]

Trump's talked about hedge fund guys like the one bankrolling Cruz;

Click link -->> Google search "Ted Cruz" "Robert Mercer" tax evasion

Mercer owes something like 6 billion in taxes.

[Wyrd bið ful aræd]

Yeah, it is code for their little club. The same people who have been running the delegate process like it's their own little model U.N. don't like us rubes nosing in.

I wouldn't say the delegate process is the "nexus of evil," but in many states (maybe all, or some, whatever), there is a delegate fee in the neighborhood of a thousand bucks. That alone is prohibitive for a lot of people. And as for "doing what they are supposed to do," are they supposed to freeze out people who haven't been glad-handing and schmoozing for years? And then file it under, "well, they just didn't understand the process..."

BS. I imagine the rules vary by state, but where I live, you must A) have been a Republican for the past whatever length of time, B) inform the county chair of your intention to run for delegate, C) show up at the county caucus, give a stump speech. So what can they mean by "not understanding the process?" In the minds of a lot of these big-time small-town horse traders, the most integral part of "the process" is being in the club to begin with, and they don't get why the rest of us don't understand that.

And I would stress that I'm not saying they're bad people necessarily, but it's human nature. There's always these people, on the committee at the range, in the hunting club, who just care way too much about what they perceive as the prestige, the weight, of being in a higher position in their hobby of choice. And after they've been the big fish in the pond for a while and come to view the process as their very own, they get ticked when nobodies try to horn in. There are others who do a lot of work for the party locally, and view delegate slots as their rightful reward...But THAT is not how the process is supposed to work.