A summary of GOP national rules changes

Some perspective from national Republican Delegate Jeremy Blosser of Tarrant County is posted here, as originally published on his Facebook profile (unabridged, with no edits):

I have been asked to summarize what happened in the Rules Committee, and how it is just more of the same RNC/GOPe stuff. I am going to attempt to do so, though it's hard to tie the pieces together well enough without saying a lot.

At the 2012 Convention, the “Ginsberg takeover” package's worst offenses were:


1) Rule 12, which allows the RNC to change the rules themselves for a period of time, without other meaningful restriction

2) Rule 15/16, which requires all states to pledge every delegate they have based on the outcome of whatever preference poll they have

3) Rule 40b, which raised the threshold to put a name in nomination at the convention

(The first two of these are far and away the worst; the third is mostly a distraction in practice, because of how the convention is run.)

The excuse they used at the time to justify doing all of this was fear of the Ron Paul people and what they might accomplish in the future. Though since blamed on Ginsberg/Romney, this package would not have succeeded without significant backing from the RNC/GOPe members in the committee and elsewhere. Over the last four years I have become very familiar with the guys who are Reince's enforcers/hatchet men in the RNC.

They are:

- John Ryder
- Randy Evans
- Steve Duprey
- Peter Feaman
- Jeff Kent
- Enid Mickelson
- Henry Barbour (though he will listen, and is way more passive than aggro)

These are the ones that go to the mics and defend anything Reince wants, and talk trash about any attempt by the few good guys on the RNC to let the grassroots be heard.

The grassroots champions/anti-establishment malcontents (on rules issues) have been:

- Ashley Ryan
- Ross Little
- Nicolee Wilkin Ambrose
- Morton Blackwell
- Solomon Yue
- Marti Halverson
- Curly Haugland
- Steve Frias
- Diana Orrock (though she went along with the massacre yesterday :()
- Bruce Ash (not really a champion, but he thinks for himself and will at times fight back)

These lists are based 100% on my time attending RNC meetings over the last four years and seeing these people work, and what they do publicly. My understanding here was formed way before Trump ever said he was running for anything. This has nothing to do with anything in the 2016 cycle.

(Overall there are probably fewer hatchet men than champions, but the hatchet men control the vast majority of votes, because the Chair has immense power in telling members what to do if they want any money into their states from their RNC. The champions have tried to roll back 2012's results at times, but the votes always come down 150 to 12 or so.)

At the 2016 Rules Committee meeting, the Trump campaign told their people to listen to RNC staff, who told them to listen 100% to:

- Randy Evans
- Steve Dupree
- Henry Barbour

They also told them to vote against *anything* proposed by:

- Morton Blackwell
- Bruce Ash

(See my earlier posts for the documentation.)

So, start with that data--which lists did each of those names come from?

Back to the 2012 “Ginsberg” rules, and what happened with them in 2016:

1) Rule 12: Team Trump/GOPe overwhelmingly voted to keep Rule 12 completely intact (86 to 23). Immediately after, Hatchet Evans suggested that the rest of the rules amendments that weren't directly related to the convention *should be referred to the RNC and not considered in the Convention Committee*, which would fundamentally transfer all national party authority from the Convention to the RNC. They apparently decided this would actually go too far to pass, so they pulled it down without a vote. The message is clear, though--the RNC/GOPe believes that the Convention has no actual governing role, and the RNC kings should decide everything.

2) Rule 15/16: No amendments were allowed, it's exactly the same as it was in 2012.

3) Rule 40b: This one was changed back to the 2008 version, then further tweaked in some very confusing ways. They claimed that in doing so they were responding to all the concerns from 2012 so everyone could move forward in unity, but as noted previously, while people reacted badly to this one it was always just a distraction.

So, they kept all the trash from 2012 that entire state parties have repudiated and the grassroots has complained unceasingly about—the very things that absolutely represented the GOPe power centralization takeover that got so many people fired up about the problems and interested in reforming the RNC.

Meanwhile, Every.Single.Amendment. brought by most of the good guys on the committee that sought to do *anything* was ordered voted down. No prisoners. This included things that were literally just cosmetic fixes or changes to update the rules to current practice under Reince. (I think Ross Little got one or two updates through early on, but nothing once the death march started.)

And of course, any change these good guys brought that were meant to give the grassroots a greater voice or just increase basic transparency was shot down. This included basic things like continuing to require having a parliamentarian at the 3 RNC meetings each year, requiring that RNC members be given notice of things they were going to vote on before they were asked to vote on them, moving some committees to elections instead of appointments, etc.

*These* are the kinds of things they killed and now have the Trump Train people crowing they beat as “defeating the unbound crowd”. They had nothing to do with unbinding, and everything to do with maintaining absolute control of the RNC by the Chair and his cronies. The hatchets didn't even claim in their debate it was anything else--they outright said they opposed these changes because the Chair should have all power, or that any such amendments were about attacking Reince specifically, vs. just having good, transparent policies regardless of who is chair.

Yes, changes to clarify delegates are supposed to be able to vote as they see best in a representative system were also shot down. But that was maybe 2% of the massacre. Just like the RNC/GOPe used fear of Ron Paul in 2012 to ram through a power transfer, they used fear of anti-Trump people to keep everything they did then with way less discussion or dissent and set it all in concrete, and to prevent any of the efforts to reign them back in and make them accountable to the grassroots from going anywhere.

Team Trump handed the keys to the GOPe and let them run over everyone who was actually doing what they claim to stand for. It was despicable, and defending it is defending the worst power grab yet by the GOPe.

Like in 2012, I have to encourage all delegates to vote *against* this rules report. It has all the fatal issues that one did. Unfortunately, I can't recommend keeping the existing rules as an alternative, because obviously it's the same thing. The delegates need to demand an alternative that actually represents what the grassroots wants.