CLEVELAND — Republican officials conceded Tuesday that they are nervous about the faction of convention delegates who oppose Donald Trump.
During a meeting of the Republican National Committee, just days before Trump formally accepts the party’s presidential nomination, GOP leaders fretted that opposition delegates and their allies might throw a wrench into the New York businessman’s ascension.
Of immediate concern is the convention rules committee, which gavels to order on Thursday. A few RNC members said efforts by anti-Trump delegates on that panel to pave the way for a vote of all convention delegates to dump Trump shouldn’t be taken for granted.
The worry is less that they’ll succeed than that they’ll engage in mischief on the floor of the nominating convention, which begins on Monday.
That could create an international media spectacle that paints the picture of a deeply divided party and endangers Trump in his campaign against presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who faces comparatively little intraparty discord.
“You have a group of people doing so-called conscience movement, trying to unbind delegates,” said Solomon Yue, an RNC committeeman from Oregon. “When you have this kind of uncertainty, you want to make sure this committee shows a clear stand supporting our nominee, which is Trump.”
Yue serves on the RNC standing committee on rules, which is separate from the convention rules committee that is comprised of convention delegates and charged with making the rules for the 2016 convention.
In a meeting of the RNC rules committee on Tuesday, part of the RNC’s annual summer meeting, Yue proposed a rules change that, had it passed, might have tied the hands of the convention rules committee. Yue’s proposal would have delayed any rules change passed by that panel until after the 2016 elections.
Bruce Ash, an RNC committeeman from Arizona and the chairman of the standing committee on rules, proposed a second measure designed to protect Trump from rebels on the convention rules committee.
The Ash and Yue proposals were tabled out of deference to the convention rules committee; even members who support the rules binding delegates to Trump, and opposed efforts to nominate another candidate, voted to table the amendments on those grounds.
“Whether you supported Donald Trump along the way or not, he is our nominee. He followed all the rules,” Ash pleaded, as he offered his proposal to the RNC’s standing committee on rules.
Ash noted that, throughout his tenure as the chairman of the panel, this was the first time he had ever proposed a rules change, indicative of his concern about this matter. “Some in our party have decided they know better than the voters,” he said.
RNC rules previously adopted bind the convention delegates to the winner of the primary or caucus in their state on the first ballot on the convention floor (some state parties bind on the second and third ballot.)
But delegates opposed to Trump are pushing for a conscience clause that would overturn binding rules and allow all delegates to vote as they see fit. John Ryder, RNC committeeman from Tennessee and an election law expert, offered a legal rebuke of this theory during Tuesday’s meeting of the standing committee on rules.
The outside group Delegates Unbound is planning to be active in fomenting action on the convention floor.
Dane Waters, a chief strategist for Delegates Unbound, said its goal is to push delegates to assert their rights to vote their conscience. Those rights are not recognized by RNC leadership but exist according to the views of some veteran RNC members who study the rules.
An RNC official confirmed Tuesday that party leaders are concerned about the coup efforts and have been in regular contact with delegates to keep tabs on where they stand. This official, who declined to say who inside the party was involved in lobbying delegates, rebuffed suggestions by anti-Trump forces that the RNC was trying to “keep people in line.”
The anxiety isn’t that the rebellion might succeed, but rather that it will make the party look bad. Trump, who has had trouble unifying the Republican Party since effectively securing the nomination on May 3, trails Clinton in most polls and could use a good bounce of the convention.
“I know how it ends,” the RNC official said, in expressing confidence that Trump would be nominated by the delegates. “I just don’t know the chapters in between.”
