Minutes before midnight last Wednesday, two of Ted Cruz’s top Conservative allies, Ken Cuccinelli (Former Attorney General of Virginia and Candidate for Gov.) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), huddled in Cleveland’s Lakeside Street Doubletree Hotel with the top brass of the Republican National Committee (RNC).

It was a meeting meant to be kept secret, a quiet but urgent negotiation to avert an ugly and divisive fight over the future of the Grand Old Party (GOP), one the Republican leadership worried could embarrass Trump, and the party, in front of a nationally televised audience.

The RNC began to doubt whether Cuccinelli was authorized to speak on behalf of the delegates he purported to represent. Though the two sides continued to barter, the RNC pulled out of the talks when, according to three sources involved in the final negotiations, Cuccinelli conceded that he couldn’t guarantee the support of his faction.

"It became clear ... that he was shaky," said a source involved in the talks. When the RNC asked him to identify the delegates he could bring on board, Cuccinelli acknowledged, "I’ve lost a couple of them." After a huddle between senior RNC officials and Chairman Priebus, negotiators returned to the room and ended negotiations.

But if the RNC and Trump teams were nervous about the start of voting, their unease lifted quickly. Committee members followed their lead and quickly killed Cuccinelli first proposal when fewer than two dozen Committee members showed support for the measure.

The RNC and the Trump campaign finally learned, in an on-record vote, just how deep their support ran in the Committee.

What ensued was a rout of all Cuccinelli-favored proposals.

His priorities included:

- Encouraging States to close their Primaries and Caucuses to only Party members with a 20% delegate bonus.

- A ban on lobbyists serving on the RNC and a plan to weaken the power of the National GOP chairman.

- A Conscious Clause to allow delegates to voter their conscious not their State voters selection.

RNC forces and Trump allies crushed every proposal offered by forces aligned with Cuccinelli and Lee.

Their job was to keep the anti-Trump forces off-balance and they did it repeatedly. After a five-hour delayed start, they decided, with little warning, to continue meeting late into the night Thursday, while most of Trump’s opponents were preparing to recess and continue debate on Friday.

“Why give them a whole day to regroup, refresh,” said one RNC official. “Once you press the attack, you don’t let off.”

It was an acrimonious end to a process that both sides said had began with an earnest effort to find common ground. Though Cuccinelli was always dramatically outnumbered on the Rules Committee by forces loyal to the RNC and Trump, the RNC agreed to talks to avoid the appearance that grassroots conservatives were getting steamrolled.

Now Cuccinelli is threatening to disrupt Monday’s Convention proceedings by encouraging delegates to vote down the rules passed by the Committee, when they come up for a final vote. That would throw the Convention into chaos on the day delegates are expected to formally nominate Trump. He’s also promising to pursue “Minority Reports” for the proposals that his allies failed to advance, vehicles that could be used to force the full convention to vote on them anyway.

“It did look like for a while there was a sincere effort to turn the rules process into something that could’ve been a unifying opportunity,” Cuccinelli said, “instead of the kind of shattering disunity that we saw … in 2012.”











NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker