In a blockbuster Rules Committee battle, the GOP establishment crushes insurgents seeking to dump Trump and reform the party
CLEVELAND — The meeting was supposed to last for two full days. But instead of recessing for the night and returning Friday, an overwhelming majority of the RNC Rules Committee decided at 8:45 p.m. Thursday to stick around and finish their job in a single marathon session.
The extension was widely seen as a way for the Republican establishment to wear down — and ultimately destroy — a pair of overlapping grassroots insurgencies angling to reform the party and possibly dump presumptive nominee Donald Trump.
The strategy worked.
Rules Committee meetings are usually boring. This year’s gathering broke with that tradition. Why? Because it’s where the two defining battles of the 2016 Republican convention were waged.
Can the delegates unbind themselves from their states’ primary results and instead vote their conscience on the first ballot — a maneuver that would allow them to rebel against Trump and select someone else instead? And should the GOP become a less centralized — and ultimately more conservative — party?
Nearly every major rules-change proposal was designed to address one of these two existential questions, with the RNC brass and Team Trump lining up on the “nay” side and the Dump Trump delegates and grassroots conservatives pushing for passage.
And on every major proposal, the RNC-Trump alliance got exactly what it wanted.
The marquee battle over binding began at 9:20 p.m., when Jordan Ross of Nevada stepped to the microphone to propose an amendment to Rule 38 that would, as he put it, “settle this once and for all.” Ross’s amendment clearly stated that binding would be permitted.
“I have no intention of returning to Nevada’s voters and telling them I had a part in shredding their votes,” Ross said.
“Donald Trump is the presumptive nominee,” added Bruce Ash of Arizona. “There should be no question who we’re going to vote for.”
“It’s over, folks,” concurred Steve Scheffler of Iowa. “We need to get behind our candidate.”
“I strongly urge us to start hugging the person next to us,” concluded Eileen Grossman of Rhode Island. “Do a kumbaya. Be happy. We have a better nominee than the Democrats.”
The amendment passed by a crushing margin — 87 to 12.
A few minutes later, Kendal Unruh, the leader of the Dump Trump group Free the Delegates, introduced her much-anticipated “conscience clause” — an amendment that would explicitly allow delegates to vote for whomever they wanted.
“Obviously this is a very important topic to the heart of many Americans — people from all walks of life who truly believe in the right of conscience,” Unruh said. “It’s not just something we decided is a cool idea. It’s fundamental to our nation.”
But 10 minutes later, Unruh’s conscience clause was clobbered in a voice vote.
“Clearly the nays have it,” said Rules Committee Chair Enid Mickelsen of Utah. Unruh had been caught flat-footed by the RNC-Trump forces. The chair didn’t even bother to count the votes.
The back-to-back binding decisions capped a long day of victories for a GOP establishment that has resolved to support Trump despite lingering doubts about his fitness for the presidency.
Shortly after the start of Thursday’s session — which took place in the bowels of Cleveland’s new Huntington Convention Center, where hundreds of reporters jostled for seats in the meeting room — Mickelsen announced that a “printer [had] jammed” and that the committee would have to recess until 1 p.m. as a result.
The excuse was comical. For the next five hours, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus met behind closed doors with key players on either side of the divide — including Colorado’s Unruh; Utah Sen. Mike Lee, whose support would give the Dump Trump movement new momentum; and Ken Cuccinelli, the Virginia conservative behind the proposed grassroots reforms — in an attempt to strike a deal that would keep the insurgents from forming an alliance and causing trouble in front of the TV cameras.
When the committee reconvened at 1 p.m., Mickelsen acknowledged that a broken printer had not, in fact, caused the long delay. A number of delegates “asked for a period of time to work out their differences,” she explained. “I don’t know what they have or have not decided.”
The answer, as it turned out, was nothing. The not-so-secret effort had failed.
With no deal in place, it seemed as if the insurgents might have a chance. But as the day unfolded, it soon became clear that they were outnumbered by Republicans sympathetic to the status quo — and out-organized by the tactically brilliant RNC-Trump whip team, which divided and conquered the committee, texting voting instructions to members throughout the day.
The first key test case was a debate over Rule 12. Amended four years ago to allow RNC members to change the party’s rules between conventions, the measure has long angered conservative activists opposed to top-down governance. The back-and-forth went on for more than an hour, with Lee eventually rising to rail against Republicans for “allow[ing] one group of people or a person to accumulate too much power.”
But when the measure was put to a vote, Lee & Co. lost by 63 votes — 86 to 23.
It was a sign of things to come. A few minutes later, the committee considered an amendment — also supported by Cuccinelli and his allies — to ban lobbyists from becoming members of the Republican National Committee. “The Republican Party is the grassroots party,” argued committee member Gwen Bowen of Louisiana. “It should be the grassroots people making the decisions, and not the paid lobbyists.” But that amendment also failed, this time by a clear voice vote.
The same thing happened with every amendment related to Rule 16, which governs the primary calendar and which insurgents have said is unfair to grassroots candidates: They were all voted down. And even though Lee again stepped to the microphone and said that the GOP “will cease to be a party if we allow others to vote in our elections and determine our values,” an amendment that would reward states for holding closed primaries fell short as well. The vote was 73 to 32.
The battle over binding isn’t quite finished yet. The question now is whether Unruh and her allies will be able to cobble together the 28 votes they need to pass a minority report and force all 2,472 delegates to vote yes or no on the convention floor. Unruh’s support appeared to be dwindling throughout the day; looking defeated, she withdrew a number of late amendments after her conscience clause failed.
But Lee, for one, insisted that a rematch would be taking place at the Quicken Loans Arena next week.
“This problem, this angst — as we will see in a few days — isn’t going to go away just because we paper over it with rules,” Lee said in an impassioned speech to his fellow committee members. “So I say to Mr. Trump and those aligned with him: Make the case. Make the case to those delegates who want to have a voice. Make the case that they should use their voice to su
