'Never Trump' notches public show of Republican discord

‘Never Trump’ notches public show of Republican discord

Texas delegate Tammi Sturm of Houston protests after GOP officials dismissed demands for a roll call vote during the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

By Melanie Mason, Michael Finnegan and Noah Bierman

July 18, 2016 5:35 PM PT

Reporting from Cleveland — After a series of procedural roadblocks stopped a rogue band of delegates who were seeking to block Donald Trump’s nomination, Ron Kaufman, a Republican stalwart, taunted them as a failure from the start.

“One thing is clear,” said Kaufman, co-chairman of the panel that wrote the rules for this year’s convention. “Never Trump never was.”

Not quite.

Only hours after Kaufman’s derisive verdict, the renegades struck back, delivering a noisy rebuke to Trump on the convention floor and underscoring the lingering discontent that some Republicans harbor toward their presumptive nominee.

Their quixotic efforts to deny Trump the nomination were squelched Monday afternoon, but not before they landed an embarrassing jab to a party looking to project unity after a divisive primary.

The ruckus centered on what’s normally the driest of pro forma votes: approval of the convention rules.

Typically, delegates eagerly move past the parliamentary procedure to reach the pomp and circumstance of a presidential nomination. This time, however, the rules vote turned dramatic.

The rules package, approved last week by a panel stacked with Trump loyalists, included a requirement that delegates vote according to the results of the primary or caucus in their states.

That rule would prevent what the anti-Trump forces were calling a “conscience vote” by delegates who wanted to choose someone else, despite Trump’s primary victories. The change they backed, allowing delegates to not be bound by the primaries, would have imperiled Trump’s otherwise easy path to the nomination.

When party officials brought the rules to the floor for approval, the insurgents tried to force a roll call vote. The maneuver was a long shot but threatened a prolonged display of dissent within the party, marring opening-night festivities.

Party officials and the Trump campaign swiftly crushed the insurgents, twisting the arms of delegates to back off.

“It was a very small, embittered group that refuses to stand down … I think we put away the nonsense,” said Tim Clark, director of the Trump campaign in California. “We had to stamp it out one more time so we could go about the business of electing Donald Trump.”

When the rules were deemed adopted by voice vote, with no accommodation for a roll call, the convention erupted into boos and jeers from the anti-Trump faction, as well as chants of “free the vote.”

Trump supporters countered with cheers of their own: “USA! USA!”

The rowdy spectacle opened the convention on discordant note, interfering with the Trump campaign’s effort to convey a party undivided in its resolve to defeat Hillary Clinton.

Anti-Trump delegates called the heavy-handed procedural move emblematic of a presidential campaign that has shown little desire to soothe intra-party relationships.

“They haven’t been interested in reconciliation. They’ve been interested in crushing the opposition,” said Randy Corporon, a Colorado delegate who counts himself in the “Free the Delegates” movement.

Success for the movement was always improbable. Many delegates, even those personally queasy about the grandiose real estate mogul, were disinclined to overturn the will of the more than 13 million primary voters who cast ballots for Trump.

“The rules of the RNC prevailed over the chaos created by a few,” said Bruce Ash, a delegate from Arizona. “Democracy is a messy thing,” he added, but “grass-roots voters’ will was expressed by the delegates.”

After the brouhaha, Kaufman dismissed the uprising as insignificant, compared to the tumult some predicted during this unruly primary season.

“Four months ago, it was going to be an open, contested convention and real chaos,” said Kaufman, who predicted there would be more discord at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia next week.

But Kendal Unruh, a leader in the delegate mutiny, said the resistance ran deeper than naysayers would admit.

“I’m not alone here. I wasn’t the one screaming roll call vote. I wasn’t the only one screaming point of order,” said Unruh, a schoolteacher from Colorado. “There’s an awful lot of support on this floor.”

That abiding resistance may spill over into the general election, she said, warning that Trump would be unable to win over holdouts like her.

“Not after behavior like this,” she said. “Not after he’s shown us that we’re not wanted, and not after he’s said that he can win without us.”

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