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politics and politicians Title: Tennessee GOP accused of removing Trump delegates Its been over a month since the Tennessee GOP primary, which took place on March 1st, so one might imagine that the wrangling over their participation in the national convention in Cleveland would be well in our rear view mirror. One would be wrong. The final tallies produced Trump as the winner in that primary with roughly 39% of the vote, with both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio also beating the states 20% threshold to qualify for delegates. That translates to a total of 33 delegates for Trump, 16 for Cruz and 9 for Rubio. Easy enough, right? Well.. not quite. Those are the numbers, but at the end of the voting we didnt know all the names. The delegates assigned from each congressional district (3 each) were selected by the voters and they are all presumably dedicated to their candidates. But because of the strange way Tennessee (along with most of the other states) breaks up their delegate allocation, they only accounts for roughly 30 of them. The remaining 28 delegates, allocated based on the state-wide vote, are divided into two groups of 14 each. By the state party rules, those names are selected as follows: (emphasis added) So 14 of the names were determined by the primary election
all well and good. But then we come to the final 14 who are appointed by the Executive Committee with the consent of the respective Presidential campaigns. Those appointments took place yesterday. Trump, as the winner, was supposed to get seven of those delegates and his campaign submitted names for each slot. But when it came time for the final selection, things took a turn and the Trump people are not happy. Some of the names they submitted disappeared and were replaced by folks who are being described as distinctly anti-Trump. (The Tennessean) Morris said two of the pro-Trump at-large delegates supported by the campaign, but now taken off the list, are Republican state Sen. Bill Ketron, R-Murfreesboro, and Mark Winslow, former chief of staff of the Tennessee Republican Party. Both men were delegate candidates in the March 1 primary. Morris said Ketron is now slated to be an alternate delegate and that Winslow is no longer even on the list. For a selection process that was supposed to take place with the consent of the candidates, that sounds a bit off tone. I checked with some of the locals and got similar responses to these which were tweeted by state senator Frank Nicely. Sen. Frank Niceley (@SenFrankNiceley) April 2, 2016 Sen. Frank Niceley (@SenFrankNiceley) April 2, 2016 Sen. Frank Niceley (@SenFrankNiceley) April 2, 2016 The standard line coming out of Tennessee seems to be that all the rules were followed and they are reminding everyone that Tennessee requires the delegates to vote for the candidate they are bound to on the first two ballots, so whats the problem, right? Well, weve already heard that everyone is preparing for a convention which could go far deeper than that, with as many as a half dozen ballots possible. In fact the RNC is making detailed preparations for just such a possibility. So what kind of position will Donald Trump be in if, on the second or third ballot, a bunch of his delegates turn out to be people who are just waiting for the chance to bail out and support someone else during the horse trading which is predicted to take place? Lets face it
even if this is all according to the rules this just looks bad. And it gives Trumps voters all the excuse they need to claim that the game is rigged and bail out on the general election or even look at a third party run which will assure victory for the Democrats. Weve already got Roger Stone promising Days of Rage in Cleveland over the perception of dirty dealing. Roger Stone, who left the Trump campaign in August, tweeted several times Friday evening about his plans, announcing a Stop the Steal March on Cleveland and calling on supporters to get to the city for the convention in July. This apparently is a situation which isnt unique to Tennessee. There are hot spots around the country where the byzantine convention rules are in the spotlight. This weekends convention in North Dakota is already being described as a process of freezing out Donald Trump after the voters were given no voice in delegate selection. Colorado and Pennsylvania are already under similar scrutiny. And all of this is only the warm-up act to when the GOP rules committee meets prior to the convention in Cleveland. The media is focusing a spotlight on that process and will be watching like a hawk to see if the rules are shifted at the 11th hour in a way which makes it easier to shut The Donald out after a couple of ballots. Its too late to talk about reforming the system this year because the cards are largely dealt already. But given the state of both the party and the nation as a whole these days, its not at all difficult to imagine these sorts of close, contentious races taking place in 2020 and beyond. Theres got to be some way to clean up the process and avoid a repeat of this soap opera. We can leave Trump, Cruz and all the rest out of the question and admit (I hope) that everyone who chooses to run should at least know the rules they are competing under before the game begins. In the meantime, I remain very concerned that the sort of tricks were seeing in Tennessee and other states will simply fuel the fires of resentment among a significant portion of Republican primary voters and create an easy glide path for the Democrats. None of this was much of an issue when we had relatively clear winners in place before heading to the convention, but those days may be at an end. Even if were following the rules in each case, its time to admit that the rules smell to high heaven and will continue to cause problems unless they can be cleaned up significantly. Poster Comment: Just a snapshot of how one state determines delegates. Also, Cruz scored commitments of 18 of 25 ND delegates yesterday. North Dakota does not vote for presidential primary candidates at all. They just select 25 unbound delegates. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top Page Up Full Thread Page Down Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 15.
#8. To: TooConservative (#0)
The rules were not locked away in a vault - The Donald simply couldn't be bothered to learn them nor even hire someone who would. Pride goeth before a fall.
Trump has just finally hired one delegate manager. He actually needs at least a dozen to cover that work. And Ben Carson is just inept at it. Carson went to ND to plead for Trump. Cruz went there himself. And Cruz gets 18 of 23 unbound ND delegates as a result. How was that being "sneaky" or "underhanded". As Andy Warhol said, 90% of life is just showing up. And Cruz showed up. Trump didn't. Cruz has 200-300 experienced delegate managers spread through the state GOP apparatuses. And he's been getting them ready for their roles for over a year. This is part of the Cruz plan for a Deep Campaign. Trump can cry about it all he wants but this is exactly like his loss of Iowa to Cruz. Trump was pouting over Megynn Kelly and skipped that debate and tweeted and fumed to the cameras. As a result, he missed a chance to really take the wind out of Cruz's sails. But he missed his chance due to his fit of pique with Megyn Kelly. Yeah, she was obviously the one Trump needed to focus on. Trump has hamstrung himself repeatedly by refusing to hire adequate staff, refusing to fund the staff he does have (by buying them commercial voter data and giving them enough money to run a full complement of field offices), by failing to hire some campaign pros to lock down pro-Trump delegates to fill the pro-Trump delegate slots for the first and second convention ballots. The upshot of this is that, due to his own carelessness and refusal to spend a little money on it, Trump has guaranteed that he cannot be nominated by the GOP convention unless he can win the nomination on the first ballot. After the first ballot, the states who only bind delegates for the first vote will be free to vote for someone else. And this is why Cruz wants to put his people into those Trump delegate slots, even though they must vote for Trump on the first ballot. So after the first ballot, all those Trump delegates from those bound-for-first-ballot states will magically turn into Cruz delegates and Cruz gets more votes, but probably not enough votes to clinch the nomination. But then comes the third ballot. Now the Cruz delegates are like prisoners who were freed who then break their buddies out of "Trump Delegate Prison" from the states that bind their delegates for the first two convention ballots will become free to join their fellow-Cruz delegates. So from the first to the third convention ballots, Trump's number inevitably drops sharply and Cruz's total goes up, pretty proportionally. All because Trump was too stupid to play the game to win, to have a real campaign that knows how to lock in their delegates.
I assume it's a straightforward vote-riot-vote-riot-vote-riot sequence.
hmmm has Trump been seen near the Hofbrauhaus lately ?
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