Rules Power-Grab

by Morton Blackwell
Issue 212– September 26, 2012

Many delegates and others have asked me, now that the national convention is over, to sum up my views on the controversy at the convention regarding The Rules of the Republican Party and where we should go from here.

What happened regarding the party rules in Tampa was a totally unnecessary but largely successful attempt to concentrate and centralize more power at the top of the party and restrict or shut off opportunities for power in the party to flow from the bottom up.

The effort was led by a member of the Convention Rules Committee from D.C, Ben Ginsberg, who represented himself as the spokesman of the Romney campaign. Earlier this year, Mr. Ginsberg worked for the presidential campaign of Michele Bachmann. In Tampa, he led the effort to make major changes in the party rules strongly opposed by Congresswoman Bachmann. Mr. Ginsberg is a man unencumbered by principles.

For four years, the Republican National Committee’s Standing Committee on Rules carefully reviewed The Rules of the Republican Party and adopted changes to propose for adoption by the national convention. Then the Republican National Committee voted unanimously to approve the new rules proposed by its Standing Committee on Rules and sent them on to the Convention Rules Committee.

Enter Mr. Ginsburg. At the Convention Rules Committee, he proceeded to introduce and support many amendments to the newly revised rules which had been approved the previous day by the RNC. The changes he proposed shared a common theme: to concentrate and centralize more power at the top of the party and to shut off opportunities for power in the party to flow from the bottom up.

None of Mr. Ginsberg’s power grabs would in any way help us elect Mitt Romney and defeat President Barack Obama. These rules changes would go into effect for the 2016 presidential election cycle. But his efforts predictably enraged conservative Republicans who treasure the protections long incorporated in our national party rules. The record will show that during the Conventions Rules Committee meeting, as a member of that committee from Virginia, I repeatedly warned Mr. Ginsberg that his power grabs would hurt the Romney campaign by outraging grassroots conservative and libertarian activists whom we want to support our candidates this year.

Unfortunately, he continued on his path. Some people, if you give them a fur coat, think they’re King Kong. As anyone with relevant experience should have foreseen, when the Rules Committee report was presented for consideration to the national convention, a thunderous “no” vote arose from the convention floor. Most of the news media and those of us in the convention hall agree that the vote on adopting the Rules was obviously close. Some believe the “no” vote was louder, but Speaker Boehner ruled that the “ayes” had it.

I was the youngest elected Goldwater delegate at the 1964 national convention. I have attended every national convention since, and I’ve represented Virginia on the RNC since 1988. Nothing like this has happened before in living memory at a Republican National Convention.

When they were presumptive presidential nominees and when they were Presidents of the United States, neither George H.W. Bush nor George W. Bush ever attempted to undermine the means by which power within the Republican Party structure can rise from the bottom up. The operatives whom the Romney campaign put in charge of Rules matters seem to want to want the power to rule the national Republican Party as Nelson Rockefeller used to run the New York State Republican Party. These operatives should be repudiated, and it’s not too late to do so.

Later in this letter I’ll discuss some of the awful changes Mr. Ginsberg supported, but now it’s important to stress how very important I believe it is to elect Mitt Romney and to defeat Barack Obama. My wife and I have supported Republican candidates every year in our 40-year marriage. This year, she and I have contributed at least five times as much money to Romney Victory, Inc. as we have ever given to any other campaign.

It’s little short of tragic that some of his operatives blundered by setting up an entirely unnecessary, major controversy with grassroots Republicans at our national convention.

Undoubtedly, the worst power grab initiated by Mr. Ginsberg was his pushing through a new Rule 12 which permits the Republican National Committee to change national rules between conventions. The Democrats have had such a rule for years, and those in power in their party spend the periods between their national conventions fighting in their national committee over rules changes to benefit this or that faction or this or that potential presidential nominee. We Republicans have avoided that by prohibiting changes in the rules between our national conventions.

The office of RNC chairman is and has to be very powerful. A national committee of 168 members which meets for a few hours two or three times a year cannot micro-manage the RNC The RNC chairman has the immense power of the purse and a large staff to influence the decisions of the RNC, so an RNC chairman can get the votes of a super-majority of the RNC for just about anything he or she wants.

Until now, the fact that the RNC chairman must abide by stable party rules has served as the main protection for grassroots input. For practical purposes, the new Rule 12 adds to the power of the RNC chairman (or to the White House when there’s a Republican President) the ability to change party rules at will.

I have innumerable times over the years recruited new participants into the Republican Party by stressing the fairness, openness, and stability of our Republican rules compared to those of the Democratic Party.

The way to treat newcomers to our party is fairly, politely, and even cordially. That’s what we do in Virginia. That’s how to build and sustain a majority party.

Among the many still-not-publicized rules changes rammed through the Convention Rules Committee by Mr. Ginsberg was one to raise from five to eight the number of states a presidential candidate would have to win in the nomination contests in order to have his or her name formally placed in nomination before the convention. Raising the bar was a gratuitous slap at prospective new participants in our nomination process. Despite his success in recruiting volunteers, Congressman Ron Paul won a majority of the delegate votes in nowhere near five states this year.

To discuss all the power grabs the rules suffered this year would be tedious in a letter, so let me mention only some of them, including the one which resulted in a “compromise.”

Mr. Ginsberg got the Convention Rules Committee to pass a rule change which would allow presidential candidates to remove national convention delegates who were legally elected under the party rules and laws of the respective states. This caused such a furor that a Minority Report to the Rules Committee Report was certain. That would have forced a debate on the convention floor and a vote of the entire convention.

A valid Minority Report required the support of 28 members (25%) of the Convention Rules Committee. Well over 35 signatures were certain, despite all available arm-twisting of Mr. Ginsberg and those who supported him on everything else.

State parties, including Virginia’s, fiercely defended their right to elect their own delegates. The “compromise” was for Mr. Ginsberg to agree to take out the provision which would have given candidates the power to disavow and remove legally elected delegates. In place of that obnoxious provision was inserted a guarantee that delegate votes would go to candidates who won those delegate votes in binding presidential primaries, a matter which would certainly have been routinely enforced under the existing rules.

Conservatives continued to mount efforts to file two Minority Reports, but in the end, enough Rules Committee members were persuaded not to sign them or to remove their signatures. Neither had the required 28 signatures. One wound up with 27 valid signatures. So no Minority Reports reached the convention floor.

I should mention that Mr. Ginsberg moved one rules change which would have required the signatures of 40% of future Convention Rules Committees for a Minority report to be considered on the convention floor. That would have rendered future Minority Reports virtually impossible because the signatures would have to be obtained and the Minority Report filed within one hour of the adjournment of the Convention Rules Committee. The opposition to this attempted power grab was so intense that Mr. Ginsberg withdrew his motion.

There circulated in the media coverage of the Tampa convention a report that a late and wayward bus deliberately prevented the Virginia Delegates from arriving at the convention hall in time for me to take part in the final (usually pro-forma) meeting of the Convention Rules Committee held as the convention began. It is true that our Virginia bus got our delegation to the convention hall after the Convention Rules Committee meeting adjourned. But I never for a minute believed our bus had been deliberately delayed. One should not attribute to conspiracy what can adequately be explained by incompetence.

In most ways, our 2012 convention was a roaring success. We presented great speeches by Mitt Romney and his brilliant choice for running mate, Paul Ryan. Other great speeches by Anne Romney, Marco Rubio, and a galaxy of others put our party’s best feet forward. The 2012 Republican Platform clearly expressed our conservative and liberty-loving principles.

My strong advice is for all of us to work tirelessly and give generously to our national campaign. Everything is on the line this year.

And there’s another reason for solid conservatives to contribute more time and money now. I believe we shall win this election. Then there’s the important matter of staffing a new Administration.. If we expect a new President to hire a lot of principled conservatives and libertarians, we should maximize the number of principled conservatives and libertarians who have credentialed themselves by taking part in Mitt Romney’s election campaign.

Then in 2016 we can work to repeal the current Rule 12 and reverse other mistakes incorporated in the new rules.

Morton C. Blackwell, president of the Leadership Institute, is Republican National Committeeman from Virginia and was a member of the 2012 Convention Rules Committee.