Republicans remain divided on the question of whether delegates should vote their conscience at the party’s convention next month—a move that could block Donald Trump from the nomination for president. An effort by some delegates to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland to insert a “conscience clause” that could free delegates from voting for Trump on the first ballot is gaining some support from elected officials.
In recent weeks, some prominent Republicans have voiced support for permitting delegates to vote as they wish on the first ballot, including House speaker Paul Ryan, who advised delegates last Sunday to follow their “conscience.”
“The last thing I would do is tell anybody to do something that’s contrary to their conscience,” Ryan, who endorsed Trump in early June, said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “It is not my job to tell delegates to do, what not to do, or to weigh in on things like that. They write the rules. They make their decisions.”
Past GOP presidential candidates have also endorsed the general principle. Ryan’s fellow Wisconsinite, Scott Walker, told the Associated Press that delegates should vote their consciences. “I think historically, not just this year, delegates are and should be able to vote the way they see fit,” Walker said.. Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and John McCain of Arizona suggested the decision on how to vote lies with the delegates. “I am not an elected delegate so I am going to let the delegates come to their own conclusion about what they should do at the convention,” Cruz said early last week. “I think it’s up to every delegate to make up their own minds,” McCain told THE WEEKLY STANDARD on Tuesday. “I do not tell them what to do, I never have.”
Without expressing an opinion on what they should do, Texas senator John Cornyn acknowledged Tuesday that the delegates certainly have the authority to write their own rules.
“Whatever the rules are are subject to the decisions made by the convention itself,” Cornyn told TWS Tuesday. “If they want to do something, I’m sure they’ll find a way to get it done.”
Meanwhile, some remain on the fence. Utah senator Mike Lee, a GOP delegate and member of the convention’s rules committee, told MSNBC Friday that he had not made up his mind about unbinding delegates.
Other senators, however, have rejected the effort to unbind delegates on the first ballot. Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, an avowed Trump critic, said delegates should follow state rules.
“Whatever the rules of that state are, then those hold,” Flake told TWS on Tuesday. “If somebody … went into it knowing that they would commit to the winner of their state, they ought to be committed to it.”
Maine senator Susan Collins and South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, who have also criticized Trump, said they opposed the unbinding movement because of Trump’s primary victories.
“Donald Trump won pledged delegates fair and square, and I believe it would be a mistake—unless he frees them for some reason, which I do not anticipate happening—for there to be an attempt to deny him the nomination,” Collins told TWS. “He was not my candidate, but he followed the rules and he won the nomination.”
“Whether they’re bound or vote their conscience, Trump won, and I don’t think it’s going to work to try to take it away from him. He won fair, and he won square,” Graham said. “I’m not for changing the system in the eleventh hour.”
Marco Rubio of Florida also told TWS Tuesday that the Republican nomination was “settled.”
“I’m not talking about the convention,” Rubio said. “In my mind, the Republican nomination is settled.”
And Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina argued that delegates’ conscience would coincide with what they were “bound to do” and quashed speculation about a convention revolt against Trump.
“There’s going to be no revolt,” Scott told TWS, before repeating himself twice more.
“There’s going to be no revolt,” he said. “There’s going to be no revolt.”
