Mike Lee explains why GOP delegates should be unbound

Source: Washington Examiner | July 15, 2016 | David M. Drucker

CLEVELAND — Sen. Mike Lee is mystified that Republican delegates would vote to limit their own power.

The Utah senator, still not ready to endorse Donald Trump as his party’s presidential nominee, was on the losing side Thursday of an effort to empower delegates to block the New York businessman on the convention floor.

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The amendment was defeated overwhelmingly, while at the same time, proposals to strengthen binding rules were approved. Lee lamented that those twin results would weaken the party and not do any favors for Trump or future Republican nominees.

Following the vote, Lee spoke to the Washington Examiner about his continued apprehension about Trump and his concerns that delegates who opposed the conscience clause were damaging their own cause — not to mention the power of the party to chart its own course in future elections.

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Examiner: You view the primaries and the convention as two separate but equal tasks the nominee needs to accomplish.

Lee: Yes, both equally important. And the convention is of course influenced by the primaries; the delegates should always be at least honor-bound, conscience-bound, to follow the outcome of their state’s primary election. But I think they also ought to retain some voice, some right to go against that under extraordinary circumstances, if they think those are present. If they can’t in good conscience cast that vote, they’ll have to be prepared to face the people they represent back home and explain to them why they’re going to go against the vote of their home state, and I think most delegates — the overwhelming majority of them — would view that as something that couldn’t be undertaken for light and transient reasons.

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Examiner: Finally, the convention rules committee amended GOP rules to strengthen the binding of candidates and reduce the power of delegates to nominate candidates. What about that?

Lee: I’ve become a big believer in conventions. I think they’re a good place for candidates to explain what they would do if elected. And, within our system in Utah, delegates have a lot of discretion; they’re elected for that purpose. It ends up being a pretty good process.

Having delegates strip away their own power and having the rules committee strip away the power of the delegates to the convention that’s about to start, is very unwise. It’s very unwise from the standpoint of the presidential frontrunner himself — the presumptive nominee himself, because he’s showing up to be designated as the nominee by these delegates, and he and his campaign are telling the rules committee to strip away their power. That’s not a good signal. And I don’t think it’s wise for delegates to strip away their own power.

This is not going to help him with those delegates he has yet to win over.

Examiner: You think it makes Trump look weaker?

Lee: I think he could have won them over; I think he still would have gotten the nomination. I think he probably would have gotten it overwhelmingly and won over a lot of skeptics. But I think this make it harder to win them over.

When you offend that many [delegates] by saying, I’m not going to let you have discretion — I’m going to let you pretend to be a delegate, but you’re going to be like that car ride at Disneyland, where you’re driving the car, you can move that steering wheel a little bit but ultimately you on a track and the car’s going to go where it’s going to go no matter what. You put them on that Disneyland car ride track — that’s kind of offensive to them — and it’s not smart. He could have won them anyway.

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  • Consistent #8020

    Thank you, Sen. Lee, for standing up for us!

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