BREAKING. A Defeat For Democracy In the RNC Rules Committee

Though you might not think it from the coverage, there is more going on the RNC Rules Committee meeting than hashing out the future of the nation. There are structural changes put in place by Mitt Romney’s team in 2012 that are being tossed out. One of those is “Rule 12.” This is the issue, in a nutshell. Before 2012, the rules adopted at the RNC convention were in force until the next convention. This only makes sense, otherwise you’d be dealing with a shifting set of rules and no one could really be sure what they were. In 2012, Team Romney decided that Rule 12 should be amended to allow the RNC to change rules at anytime. This is how FreedomWorks described it:

Amend existing Rule 12 to hand members of the Republican National Committee, for the first time, the power to change the party’s rules on the fly between national conventions. (National conventions only take place during presidential election years.) The RNC may not amend Rule 12, however; that privilege remains reserved to a national convention. Three-fourths of RNC members must approve a proposed rules change for it to take effect.

Comment: This is unprecedented. It would give RNC members a new power to circumvent rules adopted by a national convention. And it actually bars the RNC from devolving this new power back to the states. One can easily see how campaigns would take advantage of this power to shape and control the presidential delegate-selection process, and how special interests would use it to shape the national platform to benefit themselves.

The Rules Committee has acted to roll back the clock:

Here we go — Virginia committeeman Morton Blackwell motions to eliminate Rule 12 altogether. Read it here: pic.twitter.com/nGkTajl8dH

— Tim Alberta (@TimAlberta) July 14, 2016

Lee, as expected, supports elimination of Rule 12 — and rebukes delegates who didnt grant Blackwell unanimous consent to speak longer on it

— Tim Alberta (@TimAlberta) July 14, 2016

Don’t go to sleep. This is a fascinating internal debate about where power resides in the party — with 168 RNC members, or 2472 delegates.

— Tim Alberta (@TimAlberta) July 14, 2016

Mike Lee speaks! He’s for proposal to forbid RNC from changing party rules between conventions. RNC honchos don’t want this.

— Reid J. Epstein (@reidepstein) July 14, 2016

Aaaaaand the final vote isn’t even close — Blackwell’s amendment will fail. Rule 12 of the Republican Party remains in tact.

— Tim Alberta (@TimAlberta) July 14, 2016

So the party will remain firmly in control of the RNC.

What this also demonstrates is that any deal Ken Cuccinelli hopes to make is basically null and void anytime the RNC decides to change their mind.

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