The Convention Revolt Peters Out Anti-Trump forces have failed to unbind delegates. What if Donald had agreed? Kimberley Strassel
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-convention-revolt-begins-1468537305
In the lobby of a downtown building here, the security guard had stopped inquiring about names or destinations. “You going up to 1615?” he asked, pointing at an elevator. “Everybody’s going to 1615.”
That’s because up on the 16th floor, in a temporarily rented office, was Delegates Unbound, one of the nerve centers of the rebel movement against Donald Trump. Volunteers with phones stuck to their ears jockeyed for a quiet office, looked over the latest delegate counts, and hunted for food among piles of takeout boxes. The media never stopped calling.
That’s over now. The fight to unseat Donald Trump as the Republican nominee was the last, great unknown of next week’s GOP convention. Its outcome was decided Thursday night, as it collapsed under the overwhelming might of Republican National Committee power brokers.
The makings of potential fireworks began Thursday evening, when a GOP committee voted down a proposal to add a “conscience clause” to the convention rules. It would have freed delegates to vote for their preferred candidate on the first ballot. The clause had been the goal for months now of Free the Delegates, a group led by Kendal Unruh, an activist and Colorado delegate. To force a floor vote on a conscience clause by the full convention next week, Ms. Unruh needed one quarter of the rules committee (28 delegates). She didn’t get it, thanks to last-minute RNC deal making.
Delegates Unbound argued that a conscience clause wasn’t even necessary. The group—spearheaded by activists Eric O’Keefe and Dane Waters, with an assist from longtime rules-committee member Curly Haugland—made the case that only a new set of convention rules could require delegates to be bound to the results of state primaries and caucuses. “The way to self-govern is to govern yourself,” Mr. O’Keefe told me, from the heights of 1615. “There’s no need to vote for a right the delegates already have.”
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