Mike Lee predicts backlash after RNC smothers delegate rebellion

Source: Yahoo News | July 15, 2016 | Jon Ward

CLEVELAND — Mike Lee climbed out on a limb here Thursday evening, publicly aligning himself with an effort to potentially deny Donald Trump the Republican presidential nomination at the party’s national convention next week.

Lee, a U.S. senator from Utah, stood and voted with a group of Republicans who were trying to allow all 2,472 delegates to vote according to their conscience and not necessarily for the candidate to whom they were pledged. He had arrived here the subject of interest and curiosity, and was lobbied and buttonholed by the Trump campaign before publicly supporting the effort to “free” the delegates.

It didn’t work. A well-organized effort by a squad of veteran Republican operatives, working on behalf of the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, dealt the “conscience vote” effort a stinging defeat in the convention Rules Committee. The motion didn’t get anywhere close to enough votes to send it to the full committee.

Trump’s supporters on the committee and at the RNC went out of their way to ensure the effort’s defeat, preventing Lee and the other supporters of the measure from debating it, and not even allowing anything more than a voice vote.

Lee denounced the result in the room in front of the 112 committee members and a large contingent of reporters, and then spoke exclusively with Yahoo News for 15 minutes afterward in a room down the hall.

In the committee meeting, Lee did not concede that Trump — who is now all but certain to be named the GOP’s nominee next Wednesday night — will in fact be the party’s choice.

“I hope whoever the nominee is going to be this time will in fact win over the delegates,” Lee said. “But rules like this are not going to help that.”

He seemed to hint at the prospect of a demonstration on the floor of the convention, noting that “as we will see in a few days” the “angst” among many anti-Trump delegates or those with serious reservations about Trump “isn’t just going to go away.”

When I asked Lee if there would be an attempted revolt on the floor of the convention, he was evasive, likely because he needs to collect his thoughts and also perhaps keep Trump’s campaign off balance. “I don’t know. I don’t know,” he said. When I asked if he would speak out over the next few days, before the convention starts Monday, to protest the RNC’s strong-armed treatment of the “conscience vote” delegates, he was again noncommittal. “We’ll see,” he said.

But it is a remarkable fact that a sitting U.S. senator would even contemplate such a move. Lee swore that he is not anti-Trump as much as he is committed to making the party’s convention matter.

“The fact that we have a convention in addition to a primary has to mean something,” he said. “Any time you have … a set of primaries and then a convention, I think whoever is going to be the nominee needs to win both.

“I don’t view this as a ‘Never Trump’ effort. That isn’t the point. The point is there are delegates who have yet to be won over. He needs to win them over,” Lee said.

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But Lee said that the putdown of the “conscience” effort could spark a backlash.

“Now if we do it this way, I think the pressure doesn’t just go away. I think doing it that way would have allowed for some of the steam to be released, some of the pressure. This doesn’t just go away,” he said.

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“Instead of focusing on a message that could truly unite the party, you’ve got all these people in there who are shouting about ‘Darn it, we’ve got to be united,’” Lee said, his voice rising. “’And to be united we’ve got to shut you guys up. We’ve got to lock up the rules, so that anyone who disagrees with us will be silenced. That’s how we’re going to be unified.’”

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