Before
the candidacy of Donald Trump, the most conservative block of the GOP preferred
Rand Paul and Ted Cruz because of their constitutional votes and their high
scores on Conservative Review Scoreboard.
The
battle between the GOP conservatives and the GOP establishment started after
the 2010 election, when Karl Rove blamed the Tea Party for electing two Senate
candidates who lost. We, in turn, blamed him for the McCain and Romney
campaigns.
The
battle accelerated at the 2012 convention when the establishment badgered Ron
Paul delegates to switch to Romney. They
proposed a rules change allowed Romney to choose his delegates. See the article below:
Rules
Change Sparks Grassroots Boos at GOP Convention, 8/29/12
An
obscure rules change sparks boos on the convention floor and a battle between
the establishment and activists. Michelle Goldberg on the convention’s bumpy
beginning.
When loud booing broke out on the
Republican National Convention floor in Tampa on Tuesday, it wasn’t just coming
from die-hard Ron Paul supporters. An obscure change to party rules exposed a
larger rift between Mitt Romney’s Republican establishment and the GOP
grassroots. “Our party is a grassroots party and not a top-down party,” says
Julianne Thompson, a Romney delegate and Georgia state coordinator for Tea
Party Patriots. “Both of these rules undermine the very nature and the spirit
of our party.”
Republican
officials from Nevada called it a “Marxist-style power grab.” Writing on
Facebook, Sarah Palin called it “a direct attack on grassroots activists by the
GOP establishment, and it must be rejected.” This was probably not the way the
Romney team wanted the convention to begin.
The
controversy is rooted in the battle between Romney and Paul, who still has
plenty of devoted fans in Tampa. Because of quirks in the way delegates are
chosen, Paulites were able, through their superior organization, to dominate
the selection process in several states that Paul didn’t win, including Maine
and Minnesota. There’s been a protracted fight over seating these delegates—on
Tuesday, after the party stripped Paul of half of his 20 delegates from Maine,
part of that delegation walked out.
In an
effort to get more control over the delegate-selection process in the future,
Romney’s people overstepped in a way that infuriated many convention goers who
are otherwise supporting him.
Yesterday, the Republican National Committee
proposed a new rule that would allow the party’s nominee to overrule state
conventions and choose his or her own delegates.
This,
many feared, would turn delegate slots into perks for insiders and donors, and
further shut activists out of the process.
The
reaction was livid. In a widely circulated open letter to the Republican
National Committee, Thompson wrote, “The audacity of creating a firestorm when
there is an opportunity for unity and peace that is needed to win back the
Senate and take back the White House is irresponsible and I seriously question
the motives of those behind this attempt.”
In the
end, the party decided to compromise, adopting a measure that simply binds
delegates to vote for the candidate they were chosen to vote for. But it
adopted a second rule, Rule 12, allowing the party to change its regulations
between conventions. Many at the RNC suspect that the party will use this rule
to institute new delegate-selection procedures when the convention is over.
When House Speaker John Boehner held a voice
vote on the floor over Rule 12, there seemed to be as many “nays” as “ayes,”
but Boehner declared, “The ayes have it.” That’s when the booing started.
As a
result, the attempt to solidify the Republican Party behind Romney—the entire
raison d’être of the convention—just got a little bit harder. “The people that
are here are representative of grassroots conservatives from across the
nation,” Thompson said shortly after the floor vote. “Tea Party conservatives.
Libertarian conservatives. Social conservatives. And we all voted for different
people in the primary—there are Bachmann supporters, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Rick
Santorum.” Getting together in Tampa, she said, is a formality, “but it’s an
extremely important formality, because we all come here with one purpose, and
that is to unite behind one nominee. What I think was so ridiculous about this
attempted power grab is that they created a firestorm where there was none.
It’s the perfect opportunity to bring the party together, and it went in the
opposite direction.”
Republican
officials from Nevada called it a “Marxist-style power grab.” Writing on
Facebook, Sarah Palin called it “a direct attack on grassroots activists by the
GOP establishment, and it must be rejected.”
Comments
The
Republican Convention of 2012 will forever be remembered as “Romney-Jam”. I
heard John Boehner read “the ayes have it” from a teleprompter after a voice
vote, but the nays were louder.
Ordinarily, this would result in going to a ballot vote on the rule, but
it didn’t.
After the
2012 convention, the establishment attempted to dismantle the Tea Party Caucus
and they did. But the Tea Party grew as we went to work on issues. What started
as busloads of Tea Partiers in Washington DC became 10 thousand Tea Party and
kindred grassroots groups with 2 million members, 25% of the voters and support
on issues from 60% of the population.
We concluded
that our economic decline was created by the added expense of every violation
we allowed to the enumerated powers limits in the Constitution. We propose that the federal government close
all unconstitutional departments, agencies and programs as required by the 10th
Amendment and that we begin to pay down the National Debt.
We know
the 80% Liberal Republicans who campaigned as conservatives but voted like
liberals need to either “get religion” or be replaced. We will judge them by their Scorecards and
replace them in the next several elections.
We also
know that these Liberal Republicans will scream like stuck pigs, because their
major campaign contributors like this unconstitutional government.
Of the 80%
of our Republican elected officials who are Liberals and who ran as Republicans,
many are long service Senators and Congressmen. Some come from Blue States, go
figure. We will chip away at the low scoring Legislators as soon as possible.
Look at
Conservative Review Scorecard. We need to replace all who got a grade F. We will replace all who vote YES on the TPP.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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