6 convention fights for the GOP's future

Source: Politico | May 14, 2016 | Kyle Cheney

Ted Cruz’s allies are coming to Cleveland ready for a set of high-stakes fights over the party’s rules.

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Cruz is eyeing another presidential run in 2020, but it’s about more than that. Along with setting the rules of the GOP primary, the party will also hash out its official policy platform — and even to determine how much power the Republican National Committee has to make new rules of its own.

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Closed primaries: This is the tailor-made cause for Cruz: prohibiting Democrats and independents from participating in the Republican presidential nominating contest. It would instantly jolt the presidential nominating process to the right, a dynamic that would boost a conservative insurgent like Cruz.

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The Conscience Clause: Delegates have, in recent election years, bound themselves to the results of presidential primaries and caucuses when choosing their nominee. However, conservative delegates are kicking around a proposal they say would release them from any obligations if the presumptive nominee holds views that dramatically contradict their own beliefs. This would be, in part, a not-so-subtle swipe at Trump, whose amorphous views on abortion have rankled the right. But it’s also part of a broader attempt to return more autonomy to delegates who have ceded it to GOP voters in recent cycles.

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Rewriting the calendar: Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina lead off the vetting of presidential contenders, and since 2008, Nevada has been the first-in-the-West contest as well. But after this year season, that calendar is getting a second look, and early states face attack from later-voting ones that are sick of being forced into bystander status.

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Killing Rule 40B: This controversial rule prohibits presidential candidates from placing themselves into nomination unless they get signed petitions from the majority of delegates in eight states. It used to be five – but Mitt Romney’s forces jacked up the threshold to block Ron Paul from sharing the stage in 2012. The rule became controversial in 2016 when it appeared likelier that the GOP primary was heading for a contested convention between Trump, Cruz and John Kasich. Trump was the only one poised to earn enough support to compete.

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Revoking the RNC’s rulemaking authority: It was considered a striking break from history when, in 2012, the Convention Rules Committee adopted a rule that permitted the RNC to revise crucial rules between conventions. Typically, once the convention rules were set, they were locked in for four years. Relinquishing even a sliver of control was a sore point for many of the veteran Republican insiders who argued it was a Pandora’s Box that could lead to politically motivated changes to the presidential nomination process.

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Killing delegate binding: Curly Haugland, a notoriously maverick RNC Committeeman from North Dakota, has argued for years that the current GOP rules don’t actually force delegates to vote according to the results of primaries and caucus. A rule added in 2008 that includes binding language, he argues, actually has no power over the convention because it was adopted improperly and conflicts with other existing rules.

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