Donald Trump Is Turning the GOP Elite “Up Side Down”, and About Time
Any Republican candidate entering the party’s national convention with a plurality of delegates and not a majority is not eligible to clinch the nomination, that according to 7 former national Chairmen of the Republican National Committee (RNC) in a WS-J opinion piece Sunday.
“Such an interpretation would be a gross violation of the essential purpose of the nominating process,” the old-guard Chairmen, Bill Brock, Bob Dole, Haley Barbour, Jim Nicholson, Clayton Yeutter, Marc Racicot, and Mel Martinez wrote in the joint editorial,
GOP front-runner Donald Trump was not mentioned in the piece.
Donald Trump has says he is sure he will get the 1,237 delegates required for the nomination before the convention, but even if he does not, he believes that if he is close to that number and nobody else is, he should be nominated.
The current RNC Chairman Reince Priebus publicly disagrees.
The former old guard Chairmen said in their opinion piece that too many Americans do not understand the rules, despite Mr. Priebus’s efforts to educate the public, the national press, and “some of the candidates,” who continue to “appear confused.”
For years, both the Democratic and Republican parties have had nominees who secured their delegates before the conventions convened.
The last convention that started with the eventual outcome still in doubt was in Y 1976, when Gerald Ford ended up squeezing out Ronald Reagan to win the nomination. That was 40 years ago, many voters and even political reporters are not familiar with that kind of final battle, the former RNC leaders wrote. I remember it very well.
This delegate process has been the same for more than 200 years. They said if nobody has a majority for the 1st ballot, more votes are taken until there is a nominee supported by the majority of the delegates.
The old guard Chairmen said they are concerned that if the confusion on the rules is not clarified before the Cleveland convention this Summer, “the result could prove disastrous.”
The party, they wrote, is “almost certain” to be holding a contested, open race for the nomination, and when that happens, “only an absolute majority of the delegates assembled in the convention can select an individual as the party’s candidate for the Presidency.”
Meanwhile, it will remain “crucial” that the process be open and inclusive, the former Chairmen wrote, and it is “misleading” for anyone to suggest that rules are being changed to exclude any candidate.
“The rule in both parties’ nomination conventions throughout US political history is simple,” they concluded. “The delegates make the decisions and the majority rules. The majority, no more, no less. Always.”
Donald Trump’s campaign is bringing this process into question, and it is about time too. The elite did not want Ronald Reagan, any more that they now want Donald Trump.
It is time this process take on the will of The People, it is the Age of Disruptive Technology after all.
To the old guard, gents, that was then, this is now!
Trumpeting for Trump
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