http://thebullelephant.com/what-last-weeks-rnc-rules-fight-was-and-wasnt-about/What Last Week’s RNC Rules Fight Was (and Wasn’t) About
July 27, 2016
Conservative delegates attempted to reform the RNC, and make our party and its next nomination process more responsive to the grassroots
By Guest Contributor Ken CuccinelliNow that the dust has settled from last week’s Republican National Convention (and as we are treated to Democrats’ display of their
true colors this week), it is important that conservative Republicans understand what the
controversial opening session last Monday was all about.
Below you will find all of the substantive amendments proposed by our group, and you can draw your own conclusions about what we were attempting to accomplish.
Conservative grassroots delegates from around the country, including more than 30 members of the Convention Rules Committee (out of 112), had been working together for months to develop what we hoped would be the most important overhaul of RNC rules in the modern era. The changes we were seeking to make were designed to decentralize power in the Party, and to increase transparency and accountability to the grassroots. Other changes addressed severe shortcomings in our nomination processes.
Importantly, none of our proposed amendments had anything whatsoever to do with the unbinding of delegates in 2016 – which seemed to be the only story reported in the media, despite its wild inaccuracy (yes, I know it’s shocking, but apparently there aren’t many in the media interested in getting the story right if it doesn’t fit their more exciting narrative…).
An average voter can be forgiven for thinking we were part of some other effort, given how nearly
all the reporting inaccurately characterized our efforts as “anti-Trump,” unfairly conflating us with the folks who were
actually working to unbind the delegates.
To be clear, there were delegates who supported unbinding who also supported our effort, but not vice-versa. In fact, some in our group, such as Virginia’s own Morton Blackwell, were outspoken in their opposition to the anti-Trump efforts, and their votes in the Rules Committee showed everyone in attendance that we were focused on entirely different goals.
But don’t take my word for it – read through the proposed amendments yourself so you can make your own decision about what goals we were trying to pursue.
While our group had a significant number of former Cruz supporters (many of whom were themselves former supporters of others, such as Sen. Rubio or Sen. Paul), far from being anti-Trump, our effort was built on the efforts of an eclectic group of grassroots, anti-establishment conservatives who had also backed Trump, Kasich, and some who had not supported any candidate during the nomination contest. What bound us all together was a shared commitment to advancing the cause of the grassroots against the establishment in a year that looked unusually promising for anti-establishment forces.
Unfortunately, and for a variety of reasons I’ll let others debate, our efforts ultimately failed. But for the sake of setting the record straight, and so grassroots conservatives can know exactly what it was that the establishment-dominated RNC lobbied so vigorously to stop, below is a detailed summary of each of the rule amendments our group put forward. The amendments are grouped in seven substantive areas for the sake of clarity.
I should note that not every single member of our coalition supported every single proposed amendment, but the overwhelming proportion of our coalition supported every proposal that you see below.
It’s a bit long, so feel free to browse before reading my concluding thoughts at the end.
Please note that you will find many other amendments in the pdfs that are linked to this article that I have not discussed. If you have the patience to read those too, you will find that we proposed many more “clean up” amendments than I have referenced here. They don’t make substantive changes, but would do things like clarify voting in some RNC committees, provide job descriptions for some RNC positions, make language consistent across the rules, and clarify the voting schedule for various RNC positions that are not clearly spelled out under current rules, and on and on. There’s nothing being hidden here, it’s just that these other changes don’t affect much… thus the name “clean up” amendments.
For your reference, here is a link to the entire set of
Republican Rules, as they existed going into the 2016 convention.
And away we go…
