Politics –
Delegates Could Diss Donald

Several solo efforts have tried but failed to prevent Donald Trump from becoming the Republican nominee for president. Now, a coalition of RNC delegates have joined forces with the #NeverTrump movement, in an unprecedented move to halt Trump from ever reaching The White House.

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They’re calling themselves “Free the Delegates 2016.”  Their mission is to unbind themselves from having to back Trump on the first ballot, so that they may vote their conscious instead.  This is no motley crew of amateurs.  Senior GOP operatives with extensive convention experience are among those who are actively exploring ways to dump Trump.

The move to oust Trump poses the obvious question:  how can convention delegates ignore millions of voters by erasing primary and caucus results from a legally conducted election process? Although it won’t be easy, it’s far from impossible.

The “Anybody But Trump” movement is looking into dusting off an ancient rule from the 1976 convention called a “conscience clause.”  The rule would allow delegates bound to a candidate to be unbound if they believed a candidate did or said something between the election process and the convention that was detrimental to the party.  Needless to say, Trump has given them a veritable buffet of detriment to choose from.

From his twice mentioned plans to ban all Muslims from entering the United States, to his controversial comments that Judge Gonzalo Curiel was ineffective because he is Mexican, Republicans could turn the convention coronation of Trump into a nightmare.  Further, with Trump having the highest unfavorable rating of any candidate for a major party in history  (70% in a recent Washington Post-ABC poll), combined with his trailing 12 points behind Hillary Clinton in most major polls, RNC delegates are eager to stop this suicide mission before it even begins.

Mike Shields, a former Republican National Committee chief of staff and expert on convention rules, said a break from Trump would be unprecedented.

“The delegates are bound right now to nominate Donald Trump. They would have to unbind themselves, go through a process of changing the rules and go against the wishes of the voters,” Shields said. “That’s never happened before and I think it would be a difficult, heavy lift.”

Difficult isn’t even the half of it.

If delegates are successful in changing the rules and virtually wiping away the entire election process, it would play directly into Donald Trump’s plan of proving that party systems are rigged and can’t be trusted. It would also provide him with enormous fuel to quit the Republican Party, gather his millions of minions and launch an independent bid on his own.

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At least one RNC official doesn’t care what Donald Trump says or does — and is on a mission to prove it.

Curly Haugland wants each of the 2,472 delegates heading to this summer’s Republican convention to know that they don’t have to nominate Trump if they don’t want to.  The longtime RNC committeeman from Bismarck, ND says Republicans are not obligated by the outcome of their state’s primary or caucuses to vote for a certain candidate on the first ballot in Cleveland — despite what almost everyone else seems to believe.

“They are free to vote however they want from the very beginning,” Haugland said. “Everything else is based on a fraud.”

In his new e-book “Unbound: The Conscience of a Republican Delegate,” Haugland patiently researched records and scrutinized the Republican rulebook for a valid ruling on convention do’s and don’ts.  His conclusion was surprisingly accurate.

“Delegates to the Republican National Convention have had, at every convention from 1856 through 2012, the full freedom to vote their consciences on all matters recognized and protected in the convention rules, with the single notable exception of 1976, when the campaign of incumbent President Gerald Ford pushed through a change in the rules as part of a strategy to deny the nomination to former California Gov. Ronald Reagan.”

Or in other words, they may do as they wish.

“Curly is historically and legally right in saying there is a lot of discretion in the action of delegates,” Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of the new book “Primary Politics” said. “The only way delegates will be bound is if, when they vote on the rules of the convention, they vote to bind themselves. Otherwise, they’re not.”

If he’s right and delegates are free to transform the convention into a chaotic free-for-all, what was the point of the last 5 months of primary voting and caucuses?

“The only hope I have is to educate the delegates,” Haugland said. “They actually own the rights to control the convention, but most of them don’t know it. They’re convinced they have no choice. They get lied to all the time.”

Will the Republican National Convention become a verbal (and potentially violent) free-for-all?  Will the “Anybody But Trump” delegates prevail in saving their party from a Reality TV circus clown?  Or will Donald Trump succeed in securing the nomination, effectively killing the GOP as we know it?

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