CLEVELAND — Screaming, chanting, arguing and eventually a party establishment steamrolling of a dissident push made the first day of the Republican National Convention more exciting than normal. The result also left grassroots conservative activists exasperated with the party leadership.
I was on the convention floor and in the Rules Committee this afternoon, and I saw up close much of the action. Here’s what happened:
Early in the afternoon, the party leadership ran a perfectly smooth pro-forma session of the Rules Committee. In a very brief meeting, the only flicker of dissension appeared when Fred Brown, an Alaska delegate, made a motion suggesting extended debate. Committee Chairwoman Enid Mickelsen rejected the motion, saying the committee had debated enough the week before. In a few minutes, the committee approved the rules without objection and sent them down to the floor.
A bit later, in a corner of the convention floor, I saw former Sen. Gordon Humphrey, a New Hampshire delagate, deliver an envelope of petitions to RNC official Eric Euland, who accepted them with a hand shake.
The petitions were the instrument whereby the rebels triggered a floor vote on the rules — signatures from the majority of delegates of 10 states, according to Virginia delegate Beau Correll who was on the floor with Humphrey.
The next order of business was waiting to see if their motion, demanding a roll call vote on the floor, would be recognized.
Over the next hours, I saw Trump-campaign officials, RNC officials and Trump delegates argue on the floor with delegates who had signed the petitions. One Virginia delegate, Waverly Woods, told me that five Trump campaign officials had lobbied her. At times she got in heated arguments with Trump supporters. At least one shouted repeatedly about a roll call vote on rules, “This will hurt Trump.”
Woods responded that she was “100 percent behind Trump,” but that she wanted delegates to get a real vote on the party rules.
When convention officials started up the business portion of the convention, former Va. Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli positioned himself at Virginia’s microphone on the floor. One Trump-backing delegate started heckling Cuccinelli: “What have you accomplished?” the Trump supporter shouted.
Just before the Rules Committee’s turn, the stage went quiet for a few minutes, as party officials presumably completed their whipping of signatories. Then Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., the acting chairman of the convention, introduced the Rules Committee’s rules package.
The video at the top shows what happened. In short, Womack said “without objection,” and the Virginia delegates began loudly objecting. Amid these shouts, the stage again went quiet and Womack actually left the stage. Virginia delegates began chanting “Shame! Shame! Shame!” Cuccinelli threw his credentials on the floor and started to walk away, before his allies roped him back in.
When Womack returned, he called for a voice vote on the rules. To my ears, the “noes” were louder, but I was in the middle of the “No” camp, and so I had a bad vantage point. Womack recognized a Utah delegate who made the motion demanding a roll call vote. Womack then announced that he had flipped three states and so that there were no longer sufficient signatures (see Joel Gehrke’s story on this here).
Timothy P. Carney, the Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
