The Slatest

#NeverTrump’s Last Stand Goes Down Today

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Donald Trump gives a press conference on the 9th tee at his Trump Turnberry Resort on June 24, 2016 in Ayr, Scotland. 

Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Never Trumpers, Dump Trumpers and Trump Trumpers will wage their final battle to derail the presumptive nomination of Donald Trump today as the RNC’s rules committee convenes in Cleveland. The meeting was scheduled to begin promptly at the beginning of the workday but has recessed until 1 p.m., reportedly due to a broken printer. If true, that would be an inauspicious sign from a group that will consider the greatest convention coup in modern history. But there’s more going on behind the scenes than a paper jam.

The rules committee, comprised of 112 delegates, can vote to do pretty much whatever it wants with nominating convention rules. What an undetermined number of anti-Trumpers are going to attempt to pass is a rule that unbinds delegates and allows them to vote their conscience—i.e., against Trump—during the convention’s first nominating ballot. The anti-Trumpers don’t need a majority of the 112 (and they won’t get it). They just need 28 votes, or one-quarter of the rules committee, in order to bring it to a vote before the full convention. From there, 1,237 (a majority of delegates) would need to vote for the rule change for it to pass.

Do anti-Trumpers have 28 votes on the rules committee? Depends who you ask. RNC member Randy Evans, who’s charged with fending off delegate revolts, counted up roughly 18 members in the unbind camp last week, while the Trump campaign saw 15 votes. Rules committee member and Dump Trump leader Kendal Unruh, meanwhile, “said she has private commitments from more than 30 committee members,” according to the Wall Street Journal, “but that many aren’t willing to admit so publicly.”

That Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is at the meeting today, and commencement of the meeting was delayed until 1 p.m. under the crappy excuse of a printer error, suggests that this could be closer than is comfortable for Trump and the RNC, and that deals are being worked out to block the effort before it has a chance. If anti-Trumpers were to hit 28 votes, Evans’ count finds roughly 900 delegates in the full convention that are totally loyal to Trump and would block the unbinding rule on the floor. Trump would need several hundred more.

He would probably get it. A majority of delegates must be aware of the fire they’re playing with here. To unbind the delegates and block Trump’s nomination would throw Republican primary votes in the trash and set the precedent that primaries no longer matter in any concrete way. That’s how the pre-1968 system worked, when primaries were mostly beauty pageants for candidates to show themselves off while delegates worked out the real nominating process in closed little rooms. To throw out binding to voter preferences overnight would anger many, many voters. Is blocking Trump, especially when there’s no clear alternative nominee ready to pick up the pieces, really worth opening up that box?