Constitution And Bylaws Committee: Fill & Download for Free

This question is worth a short book, so if there’s a character limit to Quora answers I may learn what it is. I wrote a thank you to the city of Cleveland at What is it like being in Cleveland during the Republican National Convention? This answer refers to the political event itself.I have been inactive for a while on Quora because my almost exclusive role here has been to support Republican candidates and officeholders. I’ve done this happily, without any strain or embarrassment, because I think they are almost uniformly good public servants. I’ve spoken out against idiotic comments made by a few, and they have (not because of me) tended to be losing candidates. But having written, like so many other better informed and more famous writers, that Donald Trump could never be nominated, I have had to stand by, mute, while I watched this process play out. A week ago, it was still possible that Donald Trump would not be the nominee of the Republican Party. But now he is the official nominee, and I am ready to talk, though I am sad to have to write what I say below.Conventions are designed to let the winner unite the party.The candidates who didn’t win are expected to endorse the winner, and delegates are supposed to come on board, no matter who they supported earlier. A failure to do this often dooms the candidate. Donald Trump had, up to the convention, failed to close the deal with many Republican insiders as well as other voters. He had won more votes than any other Republican candidate, but had spawned a #nevertrump movement that was strong and engaged. Elected Republican officials stayed away in droves, with transparently sarcastic excuses. See Senator to Skip GOP Convention, Watch ‘Dumpster Fires’ Instead. The convention was where the RNC and the Trump campaign would learn what part of the #nevertrump movement was strong enough to defeat him outright, what part was #nevertrump only until he was nominated, and what part would walk away from his candidacy if he was nominated.The RNC and the Trump campaign functioned as one unit during the convention, and my perception is that the Trump campaign, understaffed and with little experience, ended up letting the RNC manage the convention. Although the “establishment” RNC seemed almost united in its horror at a Trump nomination last winter, they fear Clinton more than Trump on the basis of political philosophy, and they exist to work for the election of whoever wins the nomination. It’s their job. Their raison d’etre.I was elected an Alternate Delegate in the DC primary convention on Saturday, March 12. An amazing number of Republicans from DC wanted to go to Cleveland as delegates, and some spent significant sums of money to print brochures and stickers, etc. With 165 candidates vying for 32 slots from DC, I failed to make the top 16, and finished in 33rd place, one vote short of making the delegation as an alternate. The top 16 people became the official delegates to the convention for the District of Columbia. The next 16 became alternate delegates who would step in if delegates could not serve. All 32, plus our three representatives on the RNC (our Chair, and an elected Committeewoman and Committeeman), made hotel reservations and travel plans for Cleveland. On that same day, Republicans in DC voted 37.3% for Rubio, 35.5% for Kasich, 13.8% for Trump, and 12.4% for Cruz. According to our rules, that meant we’d send ten delegates to Cleveland pledged to vote for Marco Rubio and nine pledged to John Kasich. (I wasn’t surprised when four or five withdrawals from the delegation led to me and several others being named as Alternates after all.)Of course the primary season continued, with Rubio dropping out just four days later, and Kasich and Cruz holding on until the night of the Indiana primary. Our DC delegation had several meetings, and the delegates chosen expressed concern that if only Trump’s name was in nomination, they would have no chance to go on record as opposing him. Only one of the 19 expressed an interest in voting for Trump on the first ballot.The week before the Convention convenes is when the work gets done, in Committee.By June 7, a total of 2,470 delegates had been selected by each of the fifty states, plus the District and five territories. A body that size can’t deliberate on arcane points, no matter how important they are, so most of the work of the convention is done before the vast majority of delegates even arrives. In the week before the convention, the committees on Rules, Platform, Credentials and Arrangements all met. At this point the Republican National Committee was in many ways no longer in control; these committees were made up of convention delegates chosen by each state delegation. However, the Chairs of each Committee had been named by RNC Chairman Reince Priebus.Free the Delegates and DelegatesUnboundA substantial number of Republican activists still hoped that there was some way to prevent the nomination of Trump. Two separate groups formed to argue that delegates to the convention could already either vote any way they wanted, or that the Rules should be changed to allow them to do that. I signed up for both these groups.A Platform for social conservativesI arrived in Cleveland on the evening of Tuesday, July 12. The Platform Committee had already finalized its draft for presentation to the full convention the following week. My dear friend Rachel Hoff had made a valiant effort, along with several others, to beat back efforts to include hard line language on social planks. She had made it plain that she is a lesbian, and made an impassioned plea to the committee, not even to simply recognize her constitutional right to marry, but to delete language that is sure to offend and injure. This was particularly courageous of Rachel, because her area of expertise is national defense and foreign policy and she’d probably rather be thought of as a policy expert than someone who focuses on social issues. I look forward to a convention where she will write the Platform language on those issues, and who she sleeps with will be irrelevant.The Trump campaign seemed to have no interest (and perhaps no competence) to shape the Platform into a document he could run on. That’s no problem for Trump; he’ll happily disavow the Platform completely, and leave candidates down-ballot to explain why it seems to recognize very little of the 2016 legal and political reality around these issues. My own selfish reaction was to realize that, after years defending the 2012 Platform here on Quora, and pointing out that the 2008 Platform had been less harsh, I would be now forced to explain this much more strident language, which I personally oppose. I know many people who support this language, and I respect their right to have such a point of view, and even to use the Rules to pass it fair and square. It was the majority point of view on the Committee this year. I don’t think it’s politically intelligent to insert that language, but the people who did are evidently more interested in making their views known than winning elections. I was glad that Rachel was there to argue for better language. She spoke forcefully and became something of a media celebrity during this convention.Les regles du jeu: The Rules of the game are everythingThe 2012 Republican Party Rules, adopted four years ago in Tampa, governed the primary season schedule in 2016, along with the allocation of delegates among the states. Each state set its own rules, within boundaries set by the RNC. The 2012 RNC Rules (I will often capitalize Rules, as well as Platform, because they are committee names, and because I want to) called for some states to be “winner take all” states, where the candidate who finished ahead of the others was awarded 100% of the delegates. This was done to help slingshot the frontrunner into a comfortable lead where he or she could begin to concentrate on defeating the Democratic nominee rather than fellow Republicans. These Rules were engineered to correct one of the perceived problems that contributed to Romney’s defeat in 2012; he was out of money and badly wounded before he even won the nomination. It was only in 2012 that the rule was passed requiring majorities of eight states to support a candidate before they could be placed into nomination. When those rules were passed by the 2012 convention, they undoubtedly pictured a qualified candidate winning primaries with fifty or sixty percent of the vote, with three or four reasonable opponents who would bow out and endorse him or her. Unfortunately, fourteen qualified candidates and a trio of people who had never held office at all ran this year. In a field that size, you can sometimes take 100% of the delegates in a state where you got 25% or 30% of the popular vote. Trump often said that the Rules were rigged, and in a sense, they were. His proportion of pledged delegates was greater than his proportion of voters, so the Rules not only worked in his favor, they probably were a necessary ingredient to a victory that didn’t require a majority of votes cast.In Cleveland, the Party would adopt new Rules, some of which would govern the convention and some of which would set up the conduct of the 2020 primaries. For some, this represented an opportunity to change the outcome of the 2016 convention. But as time wore on, it became clear that the outcome in 2016 was set, and the emphasis was on setting up Rules for the 2020 cycle that would work better than the ones that led to 2016’s result.The Rules Committee is made up of two representatives from each state, the District, and five territories. This is what the meeting looked like Wednesday from where non-members of the committee sat. Note that it’s not possible to flank them and see what committee members see. Media was stationed behind the Chairmen, and staff to the far side.Wednesday morning the Rules Committee began its work. It was well understood by all that there would be some effort by Committee Members associated with Free the Delegates and Delegates Unbound to allow delegates to “vote their conscience”, and nobody knew what would happen if that passed. Almost everyone knew that if delegates were free to vote their conscience, Donald Trump would not be nominated. Many felt there was a lot of risk whether this effort was successful or not, and if it had been passed, in my judgment the delegates almost certainly would have voted to nominate Trump anyway, against their own conscience but out of respect for the voters who had cast votes last winter. It was abundantly clear that no other candidate had put out feelers or done any work to organize any effort at all to defeat Trump at the convention. Trump is, after all twenty years older than several of the candidates who bowed out, and they know they have four, five or six elections ahead of them. Consensus began to emerge that the Rules fight was really about that portion of the Rules that would govern the 2020 race, and a more general but strongly-felt effort to empower the delegates to the convention in the future.The RNC, however, was nervous, apparently, about the possibility of the 2016 convention getting out of their control. They evidently saw even the efforts to reform the Rules that didn’t affect Trump as a threat to their effort to create an image of harmony and unity among the delegates. Dissension at any level needed to be crushed. There were dozens of amendments presented and debated. But this is what the committee members could see:There was a sign being held up for each amendment that read “Trump/RNC NO” (or in a few cases, “Trump/RNC Yes”). Members of the committee had been lobbied and whipped (not as painful as it sounds - in this context it means carefully counted), and warned that any changes would lead to chaos, and were the work of Ted Cruz’s team, and therefore must be quashed. There was still significant dissension, however, and through some terrible miracle, the only printer in Cleveland broke down. The Committee was asked to adjourn for hours while the printer was being repaired. To be clear, nobody got bribed, and nobody got physically threatened, to my knowledge.This first person account was posted publicly by one member of the committee: (I have edited it where there are ellipses…)“Yesterday was a long day on Convention Rules Committee. I was part of a concerted effort by the Trump Team, to keep most of the existing rules intact and to work against the introduction of the Conscience Clause. Our meeting began shortly after 8am... We then had a short break and upon return and resuming business around 9am, we went into another recess because of "printer difficulties" and would reconvene at 10am. Shortly after 10am, we once again reconvened, but were told that the "technical difficulties" were ongoing and we would be in recess until 1pm. Nobody was buying the narrative of technical difficulties. What was actually occurring was a behind-the-scenes meeting between handlers of Cruz and other former candidates, Reince Priebus and the Trump handlers to negotiate rules changes…“The strategy for the remainder of the meeting was to attempt to vote as a majority against any remaining rules amendments and to stay the course and complete the meeting, however long that would take. This tactic worked in our favor for two reasons. First, the constant defeat of every rules amendment had a demoralizing effect on our opposition, those wanting to offer the Conscience Clause and unbind delegates. Second, by our staying to complete our work late last night, rather than end at 6pm and reconvene today, wore down our opposition and didn't give them any opportunity to regroup. The Conscience Clause was defeated. There will be no unbinding of the delegates. We adjourned just before midnight.“What I did yesterday on the Convention Rules Committee did not make some of my friends happy. I understand. I'm not happy with some of my votes yesterday…”This strategy worked, and the majority eventually pressured the minority to withdraw further amendments. It was obvious that no amendment would be passed, and the “conscience clause” faction gave up. Just withdrawing proposed amendments still took until 11:30pm. This was indeed a crushing victory by the RNC/Trump team, and they deserve kudos for their ability to maintain control. Again, no threats, no bribes - this is the way it is supposed to work. However, in their zeal to produce unity, I believe the RNC miscalculated, overstepped, and created bad feelings that will not soon go away. But on that score, they had just started…A more modest goalOver the weekend, with no alternative candidate, the minority retrenched and set one goal. FreeTheDelegates and DelegatesUnbound finally joined to collect signatures on simple petitions calling for a roll call vote on the Rules, which would be presented to the full convention on Monday, the first day of the actual convention. Delegates were arriving Sunday night, and the vote would take place Monday night, so there was very little time to make this happen. Rejection of the Rules report on the convention floor would have led to some unpredictable results; the Rules would have to be amended by the Committee and resubmitted for another vote. There was actually little or no effort to organize what would happen in that case, because nobody expected it to come to pass. To get a roll call vote rather than a voice vote requires written petitions with a majority of signatures from seven states. Many states had dedicated volunteers available to work on this effort, but smaller states were targeted to increase the likelihood of success. I helped gather signatures from eleven of the nineteen DC delegates. Texas and other large states generally fell short, in the limited time available, to collect signatures, but Virginia rounded up a majority.Showtime - The Convention beginsThe Monday session began in the afternoon, and our effort to have a roll call vote on the Rules seemed to be going well. A few of us loitered in the hallway of the arena near the Microsoft booth, while various states brought petitions to us. Soon we were surrounded by RNC whips with earpieces and yellow hats. (This business of the hats was an interesting subplot. DelegatesUnbound had managed to distribute hundreds of hats to those who wanted a roll call vote. They were very bright neon yellow-green so that everyone could spot the people on our team. Monday at noon, the RNC whips suddenly had identical hats! I’d love to find out some day who told the RNC about the hats. Perhaps reporters who saw the hats passed this on, not purposely taking sides but inadvertently helping the RNC. Below, this friendly woman’s face is obscured to protect those who thought they were doing the right thing:)Once we had obtained a majority of signatures on each of three original copies, the game began. We had three originals in case anyone was accidentally jostled and “dropped” theirs. We had additional copies made for the media. We released to the media the fact that we had the requisite signatures. The petitions went into stacks of yellow envelopes, and couriers were sent out in every direction with the real petitions, the backup petitions, the backup backup petitions, and decoy envelopes. All of this was recorded and posted online. This bit of drama wasn’t wasted; it was impossible for even a large number of yellow-hat whips to figure out where the petitions were. But they had a big advantage. They knew where the petitions were headed.As expected, we had difficulty filing petitions with the Secretary of the Convention, as required. Life is simple when you are in charge. If the Rules say you have to file your petitions with one person, the Secretary of the Convention, the people in charge play “Hide the Secretary”. In fair meetings, the Chair is at the front of the room. You can make a motion by rising and making the motion. The Convention is run according to House of Representatives Rules that are less familiar to almost everyone than Robert’s Rules. But our alpha team understood this perfectly, and with borrowed credentials that would allow them to get near the Secretary, they set off. It was a diverse group, but our secret weapon was Senator Gordon Humphrey, an elderly but strong and dignified man who repeatedly introduced himself to others simply as “Gordon”. We also had a Texas delegate who was roughly eight feet tall, our media guy, and others chosen to give us the best chance of succeeding. I wasn’t with them. I can’t describe what happened when they came as close as they could, and were denied access by armed guards. I know that through some force of willpower and good manners, our team forced them to accept the packet containing nine states with majorities, and obtained a signed receipt. Each of those states, plus two more, were simultaneously making individual efforts to file duplicates for their state. Unfortunately, of the eleven states that attempted to file petitions, as far as I’m aware, only one got far enough to receive a receipt from an official who promised to forward them to the Secretary. Some day I will see the Secretary, who I’ve known casually for several years, and ask her if she was locked in a cell, or taken out to lunch, or what. I can’t believe it made her feel very good about her role, to be in charge of receiving petitions, and purposely make it virtually impossible for anyone to file any petition.So the media, alerted to this drama, gathered around. Loud music played on the floor. And played, and played. Bad Rush cover bands took the stage and played some more. The delay stretched over an hour, and then two. What was happening was that the RNC was finding signatories to the petitions and asking them to “unsign”. Once again, no bribes, no physical threats. Just people like and including Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign manager, personally lobbying delegates. This is what he was hired for. He’s good, and has had this job before. He’s a lobbyist, and probably has as much skill as any human at sizing up someone, engaging them in polite conversation, assessing their weak points, and going for the kill. Fair enough. This is politics. After an almost interminable delay, they flipped an additional DC delegate in his twenties, in addition to the one who had changed her mind earlier. With his recantation, they had brought DC down to nine out of nineteen, and DC was no longer one of the seven with a majority. All states were whipped, and two other states had met similar lobbying efforts and caved. The two states that had failed to get their petitions into our joint packet were ignored.Convention Chair Paul Ryan and Chairman Reince Priebus must have known that they wanted to be nowhere near the gavel during what was about to happen. Representative Steve Womack of Arkansas must have pulled the short straw that day, and he came to the stage as the Chair, and called for a voice vote on the Rules. He called for a voice vote, delegates on both sides yelled loudly, and he announced that the Rules as presented by the Rules Committee were adopted, “without objection”. Gavel. Womack retreated for several minutes, inexplicably but obviously unprepared and rattled. He returned and asked for another voice vote, de novo, and after a repeat of the previous result, recognized the Chair of the Utah delegation, who requested a Roll Call vote. Womack then announced that nine states had called for a roll call vote, but three states had withdrawn their petitions (meaning, more precisely, they found the necessary number of delegates who they were able to convince to “unsign”), and the motion for a roll call vote therefore fails. He repeatedly asks (accidently in to the live mic) whether it’s “time for the script”. Eventually, he recognizes a motion to adopt the Platform. In other words, the fight over the Rules is over.Rules are important. This is the lesson. In America, at this level, there is no physical coercion. People normally play by the rules. The RNC did not play fair, and they embarrassed themselves before the world. We had no time between Sunday night and Monday noon to train the signers, but if we had, we could have played the same game, and instructed all the signers to get the hell off the floor, take off name tags, and not answer their phones. But truth be told, there was no candidate to inspire this effort. I was involved directly in these efforts to get a roll call vote, and I saw lots of intelligent, serious people work hard to see it through. But we didn’t have dozens of paid whips on the floor to lobby and we didn’t have control of the gavel. We lost.The Nomination of Donald J. TrumpThe Roll Call of the states to nominate Donald Trump would be the straw that broke the camel’s back for many. DC’s delegation was bound, by the new Rules passed a day earlier, to vote as their voters instructed them, and was forbidden to vote their conscience. (Ironically, one delegate did want to vote for Trump, but the Rules wouldn’t allow that.) This was enormously troubling to the majority of the DC delegation, who had run on March 12 wearing #nevertrump stickers. They had left home telling their families that they would not vote for Trump. But there was a problem. DC Rules state that if only one name is put in nomination, DC’s votes will go to that candidate. This rule went into effect in the fall of 2015 when none of us dreamed what it would mean last week. Our three RNC representatives entered into negotiations with the RNC back in May and June. They came back to the elected group of sixteen delegates and assured them that they would be able to vote for Rubio and Kasich, and the Secretary of the Convention would recognize their votes as cast.That evening, the DC delegation wrongly thought that there would be nominating speeches that would last a couple of hours, and then a roll call vote. The Mayor of DC invited them to a cocktail party some distance away from the arena, to occur while the convention was in session. To the surprise of the DC delegation, the RNC chose to hold the roll call early, before the main “nominating” speeches. Network coverage wasn’t up yet, and perhaps they didn’t want American audiences to watch them execute their plan.The DC Chair received a phone call saying that the roll call would start in twenty minutes. He was instructed to cast all nineteen votes for Trump. He refused. A flurry of calls ensued, with our Chairman holding firm. He and a few other delegates rushed back to the arena and made it to the floor before DC was called. The Secretary announced (before our votes were cast), “DC casts nineteen votes for Donald J. Trump.” Our Chair took the microphone and announced, “Ten votes for Marco Rubio and nine votes for John Kasich.” The Secretary intoned, “Nineteen votes for Donald J. Trump”, and brought down the gavel.FailThe RNC made a dozen powerful enemies with that maneuver against DC, and dozens more among other states. They knew they had a rule at the DC level, but they disregarded the rule they had just adopted the day before. Their task, as they saw it, was to produce the illusion of unity. They failed. They evidently felt that if they allowed any crack in the dam to widen, the dam would break and Trump might very well not be nominated. I think they were wrong; Trump was in control and had more votes than he needed. That’s what constitutes a profound error in political judgment and a breakdown in basic competence, in my opinion. The RNC had only to work with 56 delegations in the weeks leading to the convention, and make certain that Trump was nominated. In the case of DC, Alaska, Utah, etc., if they had made a phone call a week ago and started negotiations, they could have shown respect for the delegates and the voters. As it was, what they did was unnecessary, did not change the outcome, and created a spectacle that will haunt the party for years. In some political battles, you have to use the Credentials Committee to unseat your opponents. That could have been done quietly. If they had notified the DC delegation of their plans, they would have had a dozen or more delegates resign, freeing them to seat Trump supporters. That’s all in the Rules. There were at least two Trump supporters from DC in attendance who weren’t even alternate delegates, and others would have gone along for party unity’s sake. But they embarrassed and humiliated some good and powerful citizens by disregarding the delegation’s vote so baldly. It’s not Stalinist or Ba’athist. It’s incompetence. It’s a failure to do what’s necessary to maintain harmony and still respect the minority. It shows a fear of dissent that is unacceptable to many of us in the Republican Party, and we will continue to fight for rules that lead to better conventions and better nominees. But whatever the Rules may be, we need better leadership that will not force the nation, including children for pete’s sake, to watch a convention where states vote one way and their votes are recorded another way, on the air, for posterity, before all who are watching, including, of course, those who are eager to criticize and ridicule the Party. They robbed our DC delegates of their opportunity to resign before the vote. I wanted our delegates to resign, because as an Alternate Delegate, I would have become an 0fficial, full Delegate. And then I would have resigned. As of today, I have more than a dozen friends who history will say voted for Trump, and they are angry.Thursday, and the balloon dropThe following day, I borrowed one of the plentiful sets of delegate badges left behind by delegates who had either lost any interest in sitting on the floor of the convention, or in some cases had just gone to the airport and left Cleveland. I went down to the floor to hear Peter Thiel, and felt rejuvenated when he was enthusiastically cheered by the delegates of the Republican Convention. They had booed Mitch McConnell; they aren’t a shy bunch. They had voted (in a voice vote, of course, not a roll call) to adopt a platform that has passages I deeply regret and which must be offensive to Thiel himself. But when Peter Thiel said, “I am proud to be gay…”, they cheered as loudly as at any time of the convention.After Thiel spoke, I left the floor. But I have to tell you, conventions are fun. There are lots of good people there. I enjoyed spending time with friends, and made many new ones. I was glad I yielded to temptation and used my credentials to return to the floor for the balloon drop. There’s nothing like being on the floor as the balloons and confetti fall. The balloons were four feet deep on the floor, and there was actually a staff hired to run around with sharp sticks, bursting the balloons so we could leave the arena. I had this experience in prior conventions, and I hope to do it again when I can support the nominee.Still RepublicanI have resigned my office as Vice Chairman of the DC Republican Committee by virtue of the interviews I gave the media that night. Our bylaws (which I helped write) don’t allow members of our central committee (much less officers) to oppose our nominees, and this is how it should be. I have been loyal to the party’s nominees and defended its actions for forty years, and never felt I had to compromise my own standards. I expect to be active in the Republican Party in the future. My GOP is made up of responsible public servants, who, whether you agree with their philosophy of government or not, are dedicated to the welfare of all. My GOP is supported by voters who believe that government spending is not the solution to all problems, and know that free college and free anything is never free of cost, and that it makes no sense for government to aid wealthy people who can pay their own way. We believe in a progressive tax code, and have presided over a vast expansion of programs like SNAP, not because we’re convinced that such programs end poverty, but because we are not guilty of the absurd charge that we don’t care about the welfare of the poor. We aren’t anarchists (though some good friends are), or heartless capitalists, of whom the best example is the fictional Montgomery Burns. We believe government has a role to play in establishing and enforcing laws that protect us all. We hope to build a coalition of voters who are appalled that we have borrowed money from our grandchildren to show generosity to our own generation. I believe that coalition has room for those with a vast array of private ideals, lifestyles, and religious beliefs (or lack of religious beliefs), because those issues should not divide us as a matter of law in a civil society. I reject the notion that opposition to deficit spending is in any way associated with any moral weakness.Johnson/Weld 2016I believe that Gary Johnson is a candidate who is viable in this cycle, as both parties have utterly failed to nominate a strong candidate. He and his running mate were both Republican Governors, and both were re-elected after their first term was over. Many Americans share his economic views and his position on social issues (that is, the position that government has little role in those areas of our life beyond establishing and enforcing fair laws). I’ve written many times before now that a vote for a third-place finisher is wasted. Libertarians sometimes argue that in the long run, it sends a message. I’m not interested in sending a message - I’m interested in winning. If Johnson reaches 15% in the polls, he will be in the debates, and it will be a golden opportunity for him to show Americans desperate for an alternative that he is not a fringe candidate. I am not a Libertarian Party member, and don’t expect I’ll become one. That party has promoted views on foreign policy in particular that I disagree with. But a President Gary Johnson could work with both parties, and knows that he is not running for Emperor.If Johnson doesn’t win 270 electoral votes, he could still win enough to deny either Clinton or Trump that number. Should that happen, the next President will be elected in the House of Representatives, with each state casting one vote. That body has 33 delegations with a majority of Republicans, 3 with an equal number of Democrats and Republicans, and 14 with a majority of Democrats. The pressure on those Members would be terrific, and I don’t know what they would decide to do. Of course it depends on the conduct of the three viable candidates and the votes they receive. But I sort of like the odds of that body choosing a President I can support and be proud of.If you made it this far, please read my great friend Jeffrey Larson’s answer to What was it like to be at the Republican National Convention during Ted Cruz's speech?