7.4 C
London
Friday, March 29, 2024

Dissident delegates seek showdown vote in final bid to derail Donald Trump

Must read

Dissident delegates making a last-ditch attempt to prevent Donald Trump’s US presidential candidacy at the Republican National Convention say they will try forcing a state-by-state vote on the rules governing the gathering.

But even if the rebels succeed in even getting such a roll call to occur, it is one they seem very likely to lose.

“What will happen on the floor, if there’s any attempt, is the party and Trump are going to rise against it,” Paul Manafort, Mr Trump’s campaign chairman, said on the convention floor in Cleveland, Ohio.

The convention’s rules committee decisively defeated the dissidents seeking to make the changes late last week, thanks to an alliance between the Trump campaign and RNC leaders on that panel.

Mr Manafort said there was no longer a viable “stop Trump” movement, only some “malcontents” who did not represent the broader Republican Party.

The Trump opponents want to change the rule that requires delegates to vote for the candidate to which they were committed after state primaries and caucuses. Mr Trump’s nomination is essentially automatic under the current rules, as he has far more than the 1,237 delegates to required to win.

In what has become a bitter internal battle, a group of social conservatives also want to shift party decision-making away from Republican leaders to rank-and-file activists. They also want to ban lobbyists from serving on the 168-member Republican National Committee and prevent states from allowing independents and Democrats to vote in Republican primaries, which helped Mr Trump.

Ken Cuccinelli, a former Virginia attorney general and adviser to defeated presidential contender Ted Cruz, who has helped organise the conservative effort, said Mr Trump “had a chance to be the anti-establishment candidate, but he got in bed with the RNC” at the rules committee meeting.

Some rebellious delegates are threatening to walk out if they are thwarted, perhaps on Monday.

Should that occur in significant numbers, that could leave television cameras panning across rows of empty seats.

“We won’t sit around and coronate a king,” said Colorado delegate Kendal Unruh, who, like many insurgents, backed Texas senator Mr Cruz.

The full convention will consider the rules approved last week on Monday, and the rebels want to force a state-by-state roll call, with the chairman of each state delegation announcing the vote of its delegates.

They say if the question is decided by a voice vote of the entire convention, they do not trust the presiding officer to announce the results fairly.

To force that roll call vote, the rebels must gather signatures of a majority of delegates from at least seven states and submit them to convention officials.

It is questionable they have that level of support and even if they managed to force a roll call vote, it is not likely to succeed.

Shawn Steel, a RNC national committeeman from California, said his delegation was behind Mr Trump “100%”.

“It’s the ultimate firewall,” he said, referring to California, the largest of any delegation.

Separately, Mr Cuccinelli and his allies would need signatures from at least 28 members of the 112-member rules committee to force votes on specific rules changes they want – a threshold they reached only rarely during the rules committee votes last week.

- Advertisement -

More articles

2 COMMENTS

  1. All these negative press Trump receives makes him more popular in a good way.Trump is winning all the way.

  2. Neither candidates are my cup of tea but I feel Trump has something fresh on offer compared to Hillary

Comments are closed.

- Advertisement -

Latest article