As far as I can tell, the only thing preventing faithless primary delegates from having their votes recorded are the convention rules, specifically rule 16(a)(2) which states “the Secretary of the Convention shall faithfully announce and record each delegate’s vote in accordance with the delegate’s obligation under these rules, state law or party law." And my understanding is that the first thing each convention does is establish the set of rules by which it will be governed. It’s no secret that while Trump still had competitors, they were adept at outmaneuvering him in the selection of delegates in the hope of gaining advantage in a contested convention. As a result, presumably many of those pledged to vote for Trump aren’t ardent Trump supporters.
So, is such a thing really possible? Could the national convention vote to record the votes of delegates even if they’re cast contrary to their obligations to state party and law? Would the states or state parties have legal recourse to challenge their votes? Would they? Could such a mess be resolved before November? Did Kasich and Cruz pack enough delegates in among the Trump delegates to pull off such a stunt?
I’m not suggesting that Republicans are likely to do this, or even that they should. I’m just curious about what the outcome might be if they tried it.
I’m not an expert on Republican convention rules, but for the moment I’ll accept that it’s theoretically possible to change the rules to exclude Trump.
WILL they? No. It would be a collective party suicide.
If their is a majority I do believe they could have a vote to suspend the rules or release delegates to vote for whoever they want on the first ballot.
For this to happen I would imagine Trump would have to go much further than even his nasty bigoted rants of the last couple of weeks before enough of the party leaders would contemplate such an action. They are far to chicken to risk it.
I doubt Trump appearing on television throwing live kittens into a wood chipper would be enough for Ryan or McConnell to pull their support.
I’ve suggested before a very simple rule modification to block Trump:
Require the successful nominee to win two consecutive roll call votes. Pledged delegates can then fulfill their obligations to vote in the first round and go crazy in the next round(s).
Of course, unless they want Cruz to be the nominee, they would also have to modify the 8-state requirement to be placed into consideration.
I also have to wonder what sane politician would want to be the Republican candidate if they changed the rules to block Trump. They would have to spend the next 6 months and hundreds of millions of dollars trying to win an election where the party’s most loyal voters have basically been told to go to hell. The candidate’s political career would basically be over. But, I guess that wouldn’t be so bad, they could start their next career as a corporate consultant, lobbyist, or Fox News commentator that much earlier.
The Republicans can nominate whoever they want. It’s a cost-benefit calculation and currently if they don’t nominate Trump it will alienate a huge swathe of the party and destroy their medium-term electoral prospects including Congress. However this calculation isn’t set in stone and there could come a point when Trump becomes so toxic that ditching him becomes the lesser electoral evil. He is not there yet and it probably won’t come to that but it’s within the bounds of possibility. The way I would put it is: the whole Curiel story is one strike. If he manages to pull off another two crazy moves of that magnitude in the next few weeks party insiders will seriously consider dropping him. I think it’s unlikely; Trump is wildly undisciplined but he isn’t a complete moron so I expect he will retreat at least somewhat from the crazy . But with him who can be completely sure?
Sure, they could. I’ve heard it explained that the highest authority in the party consists of the delegates at the national convention. They can change the rules however they want, unbind everybody, or make a rule that proclaims the wizened corpse of Ronald Reagan to be the nominee. The trouble is, can they produce the votes in the convention? If a majority are truly Trump supporters or others who would be afraid of the consequences of making the change, then these rule changes aren’t going to happen. I think if Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell both advocated for Trump to be dumped, it just might work. Or not.
Not quite. A little over 40% of delegates would still be bound for a second vote. It’s not until the 4th vote, when Florida delegates are unbound, that the final low of only 13% of the delegates are locked in.
You can’t just look at the convention rules; you also have to look at state law. States are involved in setting primary/caucus dates; what restrictions do they have if any on whether delegates are bound to follow primary/caucus results?
They could, technically, but it wouldn’t save them. Trump and his merry band of fascists would split and run third party. This has been what the Pubs have feared from the beginning. If they were going to deny Trump, they should have done it a year ago - disinvite him to all the debates, kick him off the ballot on grounds that he’s unqualified.
Instead, they’ve lent him full legitimacy for a year now. He won their race fair and square. He’s humiliated their more mainstream candidates. He’s caused them to waste millions of dollars. He’s emboldened their voters in all their worst impulses.
Throw him out now and he’ll still go third party. His fans will metaphorically riot (and maybe not so metaphorically, too.) All the Republicans who’ve wasted time and money supporting him will be aggravated. He’ll make it his life’s mission to destroy the Republican Party, starting with apocalyptic lawsuits. He’ll fund primary challenges every where you look.
And Hillary Clinton will still win in November.
I think the best RNC plan right now is for individuals to pull their personal support for Trump, and let him have this party, to win or lose on his own. And then when he does lose, the RNC individuals can come back and say, “Man, what a weekend. Was it the shrooms? Whatever. We’re never doing that again.”
If I read the rules of the convention(pdf) correctly, there’s no such thing as a “very simple rule modification.”
Now, there were 11 states where Trump didn’t win, but only in Wyoming, Utah and Colorado (Cruz) and Ohio (Kasich) did another candidate actually win a majority of delegates. That means a stop Trump movement would have to forge some sort of coalition among Cruz, Rubio and Kasich delegates in at least four other states while holding the four anchor states just to get a motion to suspend Rule 16a up for a vote.
Such a motion would need a majority vote (1237) to pass. Trump has 1541 delegates right now, meaning 304 would have to defect. I just can’t accept that every non-Trump delegate plus 20% of the Trump delegates is ready to rip the convention, the election and the party itself apart to nominate. . . who, exactly?
I think you are misreading the delegate situation. Despite the majority of delegates being pledged to Trump they are not pledged to vote however he asks on rule changes and many probably hate him. So a large number of them could easily vote for a rule change that screws Trump and allows them to at some point vote against him.
Eh, don’t be so sure. The nominee would have months to calm everyone down, and if it’s someone electable like Kasich, then he’s already got the independent vote locked up. So it will just be a matter of securing the GOP base.
For what it’s worth, most Trump voters I’ve talked to like Kasich. Much like Sanders supporters, they may be quite pissed, but in November will support Kasich over Clinton.
If the GOP does something extremely stupid and nominates Jeb Bush, then whatever, screw them. If you’re going to negate the will of the voters, at least pick THE BEST CANDIDATE EVUH!!! Which may not be Kasich, but it better be somebody good.
Well, I don’t think it’s likely but that’s only because we don’t seem to have a strong unified will to do so. It would still be quite difficult even then. But Trump spent no effort making sure loyalists got delegate slots, they are mostly just random Republicans. So a concerted effort to derail him, based around the horror of Trump’s nomination, is certainly possible. Though the democracy zealots might resist.
So would getting behind Trump. They have no options left that would not be party suicide, at least for this cycle. If I were in the Pub Establishment, I would just resign myself to losing this presidential election and a lot of others downballot, and start laying plans for post-election damage control and rebuilding and the 2018 midterms.
