Steve Albertson
8:20 PM Marcus Luttrell is a strong pick. A great guy to have on your side in politics, war, or anything else.
Steve Albertson
8:16 PM Wow. Chachi in prime time.
Steve Albertson
8:06 PM And we’re back. A lot of backbiting and recriminations over the last 3 hours. I may have more thoughts as time allows in the coming days, but here’s what I’m seeing among conservatives: there is not much appetite for harming or undemanding our nominee, even when his folks just put their boots on our necks in such a flagrantly abusive manner. As much as the instinct right now is to put it behind us to support our nominee, this sort of injury is not the kind of thing that will soon be soon forgotten.
Steve Albertson
4:55 PM Recess until the prime time session, which begins at 7:50 PM.
Steve Albertson
4:21 PM In possibly the most egregious abuse of power ever displayed at a modern GOP convention. The Priebus RNC completely rolled over the rules and the delegates by ignoring the move for a roll call vote and adopting the rules without even a semblance of fairness. Trumpsters claimed the push for rules changes were aimed at embarrassing Trump…not only is that an egregious falsehood, what actually happened just did more to harm Trump than any rules change ever could. The thugs are in charge at RNC.
The RNC claims there weren’t enough states with adequate signatures to take a roll call vote (a dubious proposition when they weren’t identify which states). Trumpsters gleeful for “winning” by making sure a vote can’t take place.
The chair repeatedly and conspicuously refuses to recognize Ken Cuccibelli, the chairman of the Virginia delegation. Absolutely disgraceful.
Steve Albertson
4:31 PM Finally moving forward with the business of the Convention. First up is Credentials, where disputes around the Colorado and Iowa delegations were dealt with. Next up is Permanent Organization. Rules up at 4:01 PM.
Steve Albertson
3:43 PM The delay has now hit the point of becoming blatant stalling. Priebus casting about for ways to avoid the roll call vote on the rules. The RNC whip effort does not appear to have yet been successful in flipping any delegations who certified majorities in favor of a roll call vote, strategic misinformation to the contrary notwithstanding.
Steve Albertson
3:24 PM Delay in delivering convention reports. More whipping, and more defending of petition signatures.
Steve Albertson
3:15 PM No substantiation of the Jim Webb speculation so far. At the moment we are going through lots of boilerplate speeches built into the agenda to give space for floor whipping. On that, we have 10 or 11 delegations with documented majorities in favor of a roll call vote on the rules, with an eye toward voting the rules down. This of course has the RNC spooked, and they’re undertaking a vigorous whip effort to get petition signatories to remove their signatures. Doesn’t appear to be working in Virginia.
Steve Albertson
2:22 PM Hearing that former Democrat Sen. Jim Webb may have endorsed Trump. I have no substantiation for this, but will try to track it down.
Steve Albertson
2:07 PM Still waiting on committee meetings to conclude. I was elected by the Virginia delegation to be on the Committee on Permanent Organuzation. This is the body that is tasked with appointing convention officers. We received a list of officer appointments at 12:14 AM today. These were the Priebus appointments. After 15 minutes of preliminary business (calling the roll, etc.), a motion was made to adopt the Priebus recommendations. It was a voice vote, but easy to count: 106 to 2. The two lone no votes were from the Virginia delegation (me and my colleague Bethany Bostron), who voted no in protest for being presumed to be a rubber stamp. We were given no opportunity to vet these candidates, consider alternatives, debate, or otherwise consider what we were being asked to decide. Instead, we had one quick vote and adjourned. What a sham.
Steve Albertson
11:21 AM So, it appears inescapable that any effort to fix the rules will be conflated in the public narrative with the delegate unbinding efforts. It’s not true, but it is what it is. Let me be clear from my own perspective: Donald Trump will be our nominee. There is simply no stomach here, except among a distinct minority of delegates, for an effort to nominate someone else. I’m not a fan of Donald Trump, but from the perspective of someone who considers seriously the health of our Party, the only thing worse than nominating Donald Trump is not nominating Donald Trump. As much as I love former Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, nominating him instead of the guy who got 14 million primary votes would be an absolute disaster for our Party.
What is really frustrating, though, is that people who are reflexively anti-establishment are being manipulated into being reflexively against anti-establishment, pro-grassroots rules changes, largely because they’re being advanced by people who were formerly with the Cruz campaign. Sad.
Steve Albertson
11:15 AM There are two ways being floated to fix the Rules:
1. Organize and adopt one or more “minority reports” out of the Rules Committee. A minority report is the vehicle by which a minority of the committee can bring a report before the full convention and have it adopted after the main Rules Committee report, basically amending it. It only requires a majority vote.
The problem here is that, although there is a lot of support for some of the conservative amendments on the Rules Committee, Priebus and others are putting enormous pressure on those members, through both threats and inducements, to convince them not to sign a minority report. Our sources indicate that we’ll probably see minority reports for two of the conservative priorities: favoring closed primaries in which Democrats don’t have a voice in selecting our nominees, and retaining transparency on committee memberships [An aside: in one of the most egregious abuses of power I’ve ever seen, Priebus had RNC staff (working on the RNC dime) lobbying and cajoling members of the Rules Committee to not only vote down everything put forward by Morton Blackwell, but to pass a rule amendment that allows the RNC Chairman to keep secret the membership on official Convention Committees, thereby stripping any insurgents of the ability to organize in advance of a Convention. This means that RNC Staff were directed by the Chairman to use RNC resources to enhance the Chairman’s power at the expense of transparency and against the interests and will of the grassroots of his Party. Nice.]
2. Vote down the Rules Committee report. This would send it back to the Rules Committee, and would keep the Convention operating on the 2012 rules until a new Rules Committee report is issued and adopted. It is hoped that voting the Rules down will give the conservatives more leverage in the second round. Conservatives from many delegations have coordinated on this, and it looks like it may have a decent chance of coming to pass.
Steve Albertson
11:10 AM The big issue on tap for the first actual session of the Convention, which opens tomorrow afternoon, is the report of the Rules Committee. As reported previously, the Trump campaign and RNC Chairman Reince Priebus struck a deal on rules at Thursday’s Rules Committee meeting to shoot down every attempt at reforming the rules to be more grassroots-friendly (e.g., favoring closed primaries, devolving appointment powers from the RNC Chairman, transparency on committee assignments, re-weighting Convention representation toward GOP districts, and so forth). The deal involved RNC staff actively whipping members of the Rule Committee to do what they were told.
Here’s the kind of text messages that were sent to members of the Rules Committee:
This had nothing to do with efforts to unbind delegates, except that RNC told Trump that they’d put their full weight toward stamping out that effort in exchange for Trump putting his full weight behind stamping out the grassroots rules effort.
This puts conservatives in the position of either adopting odious rules (including, for instance, provisions saying that future convention committee membership lists don’t have to be disclosed by the RNC Chairman, so that no future insurgencies can be organized by people who may oppose the Chairman), or trying to challenge the rules in some fashion from the floor.
Steve Albertson
11:00 AM Yesterday was the unofficial beginning of the Convention. Many delegates had arrived early for meetings of the Rules, Platform, and Arrangements Committees, but most other delegates arrived Sunday. The opening ceremony took place at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in downtown Cleveland (with lines to enter stretching to nearly half a mile at times).
One of the key currencies of Conventions is rumors, and this one is no different. Rumors are flying everywhere about who has how many votes and for what, and who is behind certain efforts, etc. Most are not true.
