Evans Whip Count Shows RNC Convention Delegates Divided Over Trump Nomination
As things stand, Trump has enough bound delegates to be elected on the first round of balloting. There’s an effort in the Rules Committee to change the rules to allow delegates to vote for whom they prefer. 28 votes in the Rules Committee are needed to get the measure to the floor.
Internal surveys of the Rules Committee conducted by RNC member Randy Evans of Georgia, who is whipping votes trying to help Mr. Trump fend off the insurrection, found at least 18 committee members open to voting to unbind. The Trump campaign’s count shows about 15 leaning toward the so-called conscience clause, according to people familiar with the campaign.
The Journal’s survey of the Rules committee found 20 in favor. 33 could not be reached, and 59 support Trump.
Should the proposed rules change make it to the convention floor, a majority of delegates, or 1237, would have to vote in favor of the change.
Though a majority of the convention delegates are bound to support Mr. Trump, Mr. Evans’s count shows just about 890 delegates are personally loyal to the New Yorker. Another 680 oppose Mr. Trump. That leaves 900 delegates who are presumed to be “in play,” he said. The stop-Trump forces would have to take nearly two-thirds of them to block his nomination.
Evans is a Trump supporter.
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Jon Richards
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I have a hard time believing that Rules will move a minority report to the floor, for two reasons.
First, whatever committee members think personally about a Trump candidacy, they would have to go home and explain to their friends and colleagues–the people who sent them to Cleveland in the first place and in many cases, elected them to office–why they voted to deny the choice of a large majority of primary voters.
Second, there’s no mention of Ted Cruz in the article, and if there was a glimmer of hope for him you can bet he’d be in there stirring the pot. He couldn’t help himself.
Spoken like a hardshell Democrat.
If a delegate to the Electoral College can choose another candidate than the one they are “bound” to then why can’t it be done at a party convention? Especially when the presumed nominee is this atrociously bad. And Cruz is not the only alternative. I haven’t looked since the delegate count became impossible but Kasich would have been the most viable candidate to defeat Clinton. I would think if nothing else as a politician he would not have fumbled the opportunity of taking the ball the FBI’s findings gave him and promptly express admiration for Saddam Hussein.
I was talking about why I didn’t think the anti-Trumpers would get the votes in Rules. I’m not a hardcore anything, unless thinking Clinton is better qualified than Trump to be president makes me hardcore.
For the rest, you and ACP are full of it, or maybe just full of yourselves. The delegates agreed to serve with certain rules in effect. If their conscience won’t let them follow the rules because they don’t like how the campaign process turned out, then they should resign instead of trying to overthrow the primary results to get another candidate. That ship sailed months ago and they were too careless or inept or cowardly, you choose, to do anything then to stiff Trump.
The delegates aren’t free agents but part of a large and powerful organization, many of whose members are, yes, their friends and colleagues, who not only don’t share your views about Trump but proved it during the primaries. You don’t tell those people that sorry, their expressed views don’t matter since you know better than they do, not and expect to go on with your normal life.
Now they’d be better served politically by shutting up and seeing how Trump finishes. If he’s routed they can start the job of forgetting him. But Silver says he’s got a 20 percent chance of winning. I’d put it around 40 percent. If they manage to dump Trump for Cruz or Ryan or some other stand-in, all they do is speed the exit of a large number of pissed-off soon-to-be former gopers.
+1. Agree. All of this wasted effort on finding another candidate, delegates voting your conscience, yadda, yadda, yadda is silly. If Trump is so bad, which is what both parties actually want us to believe, why not let him shoot himself in the proverbial foot and lose in this predicted landslide? He could be this generations’ Goldwater. Then run a “regular” candidate next time, Rubio or Kasich will still be here.
All of the yowling, though, is whistling past the graveyard, because the establishment is realizing the folks are so pissed off that they’ll actually vote for the guy. And on a much smaller scale, actions like this parking space debacle by this Cobb County Goober don’t help in the overall narrative.
Do our borders need better protection? Obviously so.
Do we need to fully screen immigrants coming into this country? Obviously so or they don’t get to come.
Those two issues alone could carry Trump across the finish line.
We did get some stinkers from backroom deals at brokered conventions but it would be nice if this year’s choice was on par with say Adlai Stevenson vs. Dwight Eisenhower. At which point did the point of having a convention become entirely pointless?
I realize than dumping Trump is a pipe dream as much as The Great Pumpkin dropping an indictment on Clinton. It doesn’t keep me from wishing otherwise.
First, #nevertrump. The whole thing stinks (like the aforementioned horse meat) so you just as well walk away with a clean conscience and hope for the best.
Second, there has to be a story behind the horse meat analogy. I’ve eaten Bashkir horse meat and it was shoe leather with shredded carrots for flavor. The thought of that meat 3 days old really put a bad taste in my mouth. Good thing I’ve got a few hours to get over it before lunch.
These same people voted in ‘good conscience’ for the creator of what became ObamaRobertsCare. For years, these ‘conscientious’ folks have put forth a string of losing candidates hellbent on maintaining the status quo. If their collective ‘conscience’ won’t allow them to do what voters sent them to do, then resign as a ‘conscientious objector’ so the party can seat delegates that will carry out the will of GOP primary voters. Then all the ‘conscientious objectors’ can gather at Bill Kristol’s palatial estate to console each other after failing miserably to put forth yet another loser.
ACP, you need to understand the difference between voting for representatives who are then held responsible for legislating vs voting for every issue that pops up in the form of referendums, ie mob rule. Big difference.