The Republican National Committee’s rules committee adjourned after less than an hour Thursday, deciding against recommending any rules changes ahead of the July convention.
The committee followed behind chairman Reince Priebus’ repeated calls for no changes ahead of the convention, balking at changes that would make it tougher to nominate a so-called “white knight” at the July convention.
Throughout the meeting, committee members spoke out against making any sort of rules changes. The biggest possibility was changing the rulebook from U.S. House rules to the “Robert’s Rules of Order,” which would make nominating a “white knight” a more difficult proposition. Soloman Yue, an Oregon national committeeman, was the leading proponent of the change.
“The main reason I can give for not sending us to committee is, as we all know, we’ve been accused of plotting to change the rules at the last minute and we’ve been accused of trying to do that behind closed doors,” said Jeff Kent, national committeeman from Washington. “As everybody knows, the doors are wide open today. You can see the cameras in the back of the room. Everybody is watching. Everybody can see what we do.”
“I would hate for us to take action right now to send this to what would be described as a smaller committee meeting in a back room without the cameras around for the purpose of coming up with a rules change,” Kent added.
Despite Yue’s objections, the push for the change was defeated soundly.
The rules committee is unable to actually pass any rules forward. They are able to recommend potential changes, which could be voted on prior to the convention in Cleveland.
Earlier in the meeting, the rules committee withdrew two other potential rule changes. One would have eliminated the exempt status for the four pre-March voting states, Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.
