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Anti-Trump Forces' Plan B: Pick the VP
Sunday, July 10, 2016 10:48 PM
By: Brian Freeman
The anti-Donald Trump activists have come up with a Plan B if their efforts to stop the real estate mogul from receiving the GOP nomination fail – give delegates at the Republican National Convention the authority to choose the vice presidential candidate, NBC News reports.
The plan is based on the fact that the vice president is still technically decided by a delegate vote, and there is no obligation to support the nominee's choice.
The proposal is being touted by Regina Thomson, executive director of Free the Delegates, the group that is attempting to stop Trump by advocating that delegates be allowed to vote their conscience for the presidential nominee at the convention instead of remaining bound.
The newest plan would change party bylaw "rule 40," to make it even clearer that the delegates, and not the presidential nominee, make the decision on the running mate.
Another proposed rule change calls for multiple rounds of voting if a VP candidate doesn’t reach two-thirds on the first round.
These proposals will be presented this week to the Rules Committee meeting in Cleveland ahead of next week’s convention.
Supporters hope the plan would not only get backing from those trying to get rid of Trump as the nominee but also of other Republicans who are willing to support him but would not want his running mate to be a Democrat or moderate considered unacceptable to GOP activists.
Some Free the Delegates backers acknowledge to BuzzFeed that one of the main arguments against attempts to block Trump at the convention is that he won the primaries, and they would be thwarting the will of those voters. But that reasoning, they insist, doesn’t apply to a vice presidential candidate, who has not yet been voted on by party members.
A Free the Delegates source told BuzzFeed that the proposal is "the grassroots saying if you're going to do this, you're going to do it with our pick … [and it would] take the decision-making out of the hands of the RNC and Trump and into the hands of delegates."
