At today’s Rules committee meeting, prior to the opening of convention on Monday, ALL of Ken Cuccinelli’s proposals to restructure the party failed. Morton Blackwell’s proposals also failed. Trump’s supporters partnered with the establishment to shoot down all of the proposals that would have given more power to the grassroots and less power the leaders of the RNC. Trump is definitely not on the side of the grassroots. Doesn’t this always happen with our nominees? They stick us with rules that benefit themselves and the establishment for the next 4 years. Trump is no different. Same ol’, Same ol’.
Kendal Unruh’s proposed rule change to free the delegates to vote their conscience failed to make it out of the committee and will not be reported to the convention as a whole. This was the proposal that lost, and lost big: 
The failure of this to pass means all delegates will be bound by their state’s primary. Should a delegate decide to not do that, and vote their conscience, they will be deemed to have resigned as a delegate. They will be replaced by an alternate delegate.
There is a slim chance this could change on Monday if they can get the requisite number of votes to present a minority report to unbind the delegates.
Good feed of Rules Committee happenings here.
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[…] Committee at the convention. Trump and the establishment joined forces to crush the grassroots. They would permit NO changes in how the Republican Party is run. For the next 4 years we are again stuck with Romney’s rules, a party that is run from the […]
Cuccinelli is taking heat from the NeverTrumps for not involving himself in the FreeTheDelegates issue; and being blown off by uninformed Trumptards who can’t be bothered to understand what he was seeking, or that it favored the grassroots need to wrest the top down power from RNC elites. Gotta love it.
You nailed it. Thanks.
So many Trumpsters railed against the liberal establishment GOP but have now jumped fully in bed with them because the GOPe decided to support Trump rather than a true conservative Constitutionalist.
Oh – and all you Trumpsters who betrayed Cruz and now hate him because Trump told you to? Now Trump says Cruz is a “good guy” and is not a “liar” after all.
The reform the GOP should make is to use the Electoral College format to elect our nominee. Winner take all delegates for every state and use the same format for delegate allocation across the 50 states (yes, no territories) and DC. It doesn’t make any sense to me to choose our nominee under one process which increases delegates for “GOP voting” states and then go to the general election with the Electoral College format. It’s like playing the playoffs with one set of rules and then going to the championship under a new set.
Technically, the Electoral College as envisioned by the founders could vote conscience. The people in the state voted for Electors who made the decision themselves.
The GOP should select it’s nominees via state conventions, not primaries. Or at least close the primaries and have party registration. Also , no early voting for weeks ahead of time, and no last second registrations that can’t be checked. Trump people shot all these down because the GOPe wants Dems to vote in their primaries as in Mississippi.
I really find this amusing in the final take all this noise and nonsense from this group who in the end really only want now to cover their tracks and claim that it was really just about their deep concern for the voter base and the forwarding of what they call grassroots rules reform so they can by the way better control the primary process in the future through the type of convention slating operations seen by these Cruz supporters this cycle. Really, it had nothing to do with demanding a Trump unbinding rule to free delegates to vote their conscience.
Ken Cuccinelli and Mike Lee were crystal clear what their objective was right to the point of only being able to generate 12 votes for unbinding from the Rules Committee (a complete and total rejection) and Reince Priebus mercifully shutting them down. They were all just doing this for us after all not their own personal concerns regarding lost of political power and control. Reminds me of the bank robbers caught red handed by the law claiming they weren’t really engaged in a robbery attempt but in effect were just checking out the vaults security procedures to try and make improvements for all the bank patrons with invested accounts.
Really, they now insist we were just preforming a public service! Anyone who would vote for any of these individuals after this debacle, either the upfront media proponents or their supporters now scurrying to find a hiding place back in the wood line, needs a mental health checkup. They have proven one indisputable fact though that they are neither really Republicans, truly supporters of the voter base (they so frequently talk about) or conservatives – just your every day run of the mill opportunists.
You’re totally wrong. Anyone who is familiar with who KC’s allies are on the rules committee (e.g., Morton Blackwell, who authored some of the amendments KC was pushing) could plainly see that the people supporting unbinding were not those people. Try as hard as you want to conflate the two efforts, you’ll still be wrong.
Keep covering those tracks and hair splitting it won’t work Steve. I’m sure you can convince the naive and gullible but I believe the majority of the Virginia base after the recent state convention is on to the scam here and will keep an eye well peeled for it in the future.
There were (or are) three separate efforts going on. There is Kendall Unruh’s group that wanted to have the rules changed to add a “conscience clause” so people wouldn’t have to vote for Trump. There is the “Delegates Unbound” folks who believe that the delegates are already unbound no matter what the rules say. Then there is Ken C’s group that is trying to get reforms to the rules to make the process more fair to the grassroots, and take power out of the hands of the establishment.
Kendall’s group is pretty much dead in the water at this point. The “Delegates Unbound” group might still try cause a stink on the convention floor, but if the rules are adopted they will have a rude awakening. Some of Ken’s reform proposals could still be adopted by the full convention.
If you want to lump them all into one big “anti-trump” brigade, feel free to do so, but you would be wrong.
I am pleased. I think the whole never trump business was silly. To try to change the rules when you do not get your way is immature, imho
I agree with Ken who posted below. Unbinding the Delegates makes no sense and nullifies primaries and overrides state rules. I am glad the attempts to overthrow our nominee and hand Hillary the White House failed. Shame on those who would.
They voted to follow the rules for delegates which were established before the primaries began agreed upon by all the state GOP parties. What a concept with today’s political process – they voted to make sure they followed the rules and not be above the law like Obama and Mrs Bill Clinton
The only thing I can think of to support the ruling is that in the Virginia Primary there were a dozen candidates, and no one got a majority. Since Rubio gave his delegates to Trump, and voters are getting behind his candidacy, the will of the people may well be for him to win the nomination.
When did Rubio do that? I missed it.
I thought that Rubio had promised his delegates to Trump. The news that I found today doesn’t show anything more recent than April, so anything could happen. I still believe that, if a revote were called today, with only the top two vote getters, Trump would likely win.
If Trump would win today, then why is he so afraid? Shouldn’t he want a vote of confidence in him? Why try to stamp it out?
Allowing the delegates to vote their conscience was a mistake from the beginning. Understandable that any “reforms” would have been unsupported by The Donald’s team with that bullet pointed at his head.
The Delegates conscience should have directed them whether to be a Delegate or not. We have many alternates.
Yes, it was a mistake from the beginning, because it would make a terrible precedent and would make future primaries meaningless. But I never believed it represented any real threat to Trump’s nomination. Taking the nomination from him after he won the primaries would have instantly destroyed the party. The delegates were never going to do that.
I can understand how some people would think there was no real threat, but after what I witnessed at the state RPV convention, I wouldn’t put anything past those that wanted to usurp the will of the people.
Interested reading tonight that all these “grass roots” proposals from the #NeverTrump camp was never meant to hijack the convention….could have fooled me!
I’m much more concerned about all of the reform proposals being tossed by Trump and the establishment.
Then why wasn’t your article about those?
it is! Read the first paragraph!
You’ve got to be kidding me. Where are “all of the reform proposals.”? I see Mort Blackwells name, whom I respect a great deal, and Ken Cuccinellis, who ruined his career with his antics at the VA State Convention, but can’t seem to find “all of the reform proposals” except unbinding Delegates, which is ridiculous and one which no one who knows a stitch about politics ever thought had a prayer of passing.
Ken was not promoting unbinding the delegates. Follow the link in the first paragraph.
They stopped caring about the truth a long time ago, Jeanine, when they supported the liberal progressive Orange Democrat despite all the evidence.
The proposals that the Trump folks gleefully shot down included one to allow the RNC to elect certain key officials rather than them being appointed by Reince Priebus. Another would give greater weight to districts that vote Republican (so that Nancy Pelosi’s district doesn’t have as much say as Dave Brat’s district in who will be our next nominee). Another would have discouraged the use of nomination methods that invite participation of Democrats. And so on. The so-called “anti-establishment” Trump is no better than presumptive nominee Mitt Romney was four years ago in this regard.