A few days before Donald Trump heads to Cleveland to accept the Republican presidential nomination, a group of anti-Trump holdouts engaged in an eleventh hour attempt to unseat the presumptive nominee.
Late Thursday night, during a marathon session of the Republicans’ Rules Committee in Cleveland, Ohio, a bid to “unbind” GOP delegates and allow them to vote for someone other than Trump crashed and burned. The resounding voice vote to keep delegates from Trump-supporting states bound to Trump came after nearly five hours of backroom negotiations.
The Rules Committee — usually a setting for dull procedural minutiae — became the site of a dramatic showdown this week between Trump critics pushing an amendment to let delegates “vote their conscience” when the RNC gavels in on Monday and Trump loyalists angling to squash their coup.
D.C. lobbyist Jack Burkman, an organizer of the “Free the Delegates” effort, told ThinkProgress why he and what he claimed were thousands of others have spent weeks plotting a rule change to unseat Trump.
“He doesn’t have the temperament to lead,” Burkman said. “It would be very dangerous to hand him the nuclear football. He’s also a guy who has occupied every point on the political spectrum, from far left to far right. Like a good Republican, I tried to support him, but he has made it impossible.”
Over the last few weeks, Burkman and other “Free the Delegates” leaders held fundraisers, flew all over the country to woo delegates, and aired web and TV ads imploring party loyalists to reconsider making Trump their nominee.
Yet even before their rout in the Rules Committee, Never Trump-ers faced a fundamental problem: they had no alternative candidate ready and willing to take The Donald’s place.
Girding for a floor fight
Though the Rules Committee overwhelmingly voted down the “Free the Delegates” proposal Thursday night, anti-Trump delegates and their supporters are vowing to take their battle to the convention floor. They are trying to muster up 28 votes from the 112-member committee to put a minority report before all 2,000-plus delegates next week, allowing them all to weigh in on whether delegates should be “unbound.”
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), an ally of former Trump rival Ted Cruz, warned that if the Republican Party does not let Trump critics have a voice, there will be a “backlash” and “revolt.”
“Instead of focusing on a message that could truly unite the party, you’ve got all these people in there who are shouting about, ‘Darn it, we’ve got to be united,’” Lee told Yahoo News. “And to be united we’ve got to shut you guys up. We’ve got to lock up the rules, so that anyone who disagrees with us will be silenced. That’s how we’re going to be unified.”
Other delegates predicted that a floor fight over Trump is “inevitable,” characterizing it as a battle for the soul of the GOP.
“I’ve been to almost every convention since 1976,” Burkman told ThinkProgress. “I don’t want him to destroy our party.”