Priebus discusses rules for unruly convention
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus seems surprisingly calm for someone whose job is to set rules for the unruly, to plan for the most unpredictable and potentially turbulent political convention in decades.
Start with Donald Trump, the unexpected front-runner and someone who has been arguing it would be only fair that he win the presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in July even if he’s just shy of the required 1,237 majority of delegates.
“Well, I mean, it’s a good argument maybe for him to make, but it’s not really how the rules work,” Priebus told Capital Download in an earnest, just-the-facts voice. “The rules require a majority of delegates at the convention, and it’s always been that way. I mean, if a minority could choose the nominee, we would have Gov. Seward in 1860, not Abraham Lincoln.”
For those who may have forgotten the particulars of the 1860 Republican Convention, Lincoln, a former Illinois congressman, won the nomination on the third ballot over the early favorite, former New York governor William Seward.
Priebus has been studying history and the rule-books in preparation for what may turn out to be his party’s first contested convention since 1976 — that is, a convention at which no candidate arrives with a lock on the nomination — and perhaps even the first convention to require multiple ballots since 1948.
If that happens, he doesn’t expect the convention to require extra days to get things done, though he cautions that “not everyone is going to be able to give the great speech about their state every time they vote. We’re going to have to go through it: Wisconsin, Wyoming, right down the line.”
Priebus sat down at Republican headquarters to discuss the road ahead with USA TODAY’s weekly video newsmaker series, seated just beneath a portrait of President Reagan. Reagan was the last challenger to try to turn the tide at a national convention, though President Gerald Ford managed to win over enough delegates to hold the nomination four decades ago. Reagan prevailed four years later, in 1980.
The rules will be set by the convention delegates themselves as an opening order of business. The 2016 convention could choose to revise the rules set four years ago, when former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney had the nomination in hand. “It’s ... kind of silly to believe that the Romney delegates would write the rules for a convention in 2016 that, at this point, would be made up mostly of (Texas Sen. Ted) Cruz and Trump delegates,” Priebus says.
That said, he is skeptical that one controversial rule imposed in 2012 is likely to be changed. It requires a candidate to have the support of a majority of delegates in eight states to have his or her name placed in nomination. Only Trump and Cruz are likely to cross that threshold. Ohio Gov. John Kasich probably won’t.
He’s also dismissive of the idea, floated by some who oppose Trump, that the convention could turn to a knight-in-shining-armor as the nominee to rescue a deadlocked convention, someone such as House Speaker Paul Ryan or Romney. “Highly, highly unlikely,” Priebus says. “I think our candidate is someone who’s running.”
“The rules require a majority of delegates at the convention, and it’s always been that way. I mean, if a minority could chose the nominee, we would have Gov. Seward in 1860, not Abraham Lincoln.”
Reince Priebus