The RNC would typically select a package of rules this week and recommend them for the convention, but Priebus and his supporters have been urging RNC members to stay out of the fight.
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“If 1,237 (delegates) do it under the rules, then no one should complain about that”.
“I don’t know. I haven’t made the determination”, the Republican front-runner told The Washington Post in an interview posted Sunday. “It’s 100 percent corrupt”.
The RNC is desperate to avoid the impression that the party is taking sides, especially when Cruz is more likely to be nominated at the convention if Trump falls short of an outright majority.
Trump’s comments, directed for the first time at the members of the national body, came as rules committee members reviewed proposed amendments to the party bylaws. Other changes under consideration would ease restrictions forcing delegates to vote for the candidates to whom they are bound. It sounds arcane, but conservative RNC members argue the change is needed to prevent party establishment figures from pushing through someone like House Speaker Paul Ryan in the convention.
On Sunday, Priebus echoed Ryder’s position.
If you think [Trump’s assertion the system is rigged is] rhetoric, if you think it’s hyperbole, you know, look – there’s nothing that the RNC can do to alter the rules between now and the convention.
But echoing the view of Priebus and some other Republicans on the party’s rules committee, Ryder added, “Major changes now are risky and not a good idea, in my humble opinion”. We are the gold standard of political parties. “I think the tone should improve”.
Priebus and his committee are in a bind.
Bruce Ash, RNC committeeman from Arizona, wrote the harshly worded email to the other 55 members of the GOP rules committee that he chairs. Priebus wants to delay any rules changes for now.
This would make it more hard for the nomination to be reopened by the convention chairman.
Skeptics, like Tennessee’s John Ryder, the Republican National Committee’s chief counsel, worry that it would be perceived as unfair. He said that last Thursday, Ryder convened a rules committee whip call to strategize against and led the opposition to the Yue amendment at the chairmans request.He said during that call, RNC officials acknowledged that Yues amendment had been pre-submitted by a deadline that would give it priority treatment his week.
The former reality television star said he thought the 2016 Republican National Convention should have a “showbiz” quality, explaining the 2012 convention in Tampa was “the single most boring convention I’ve ever seen”.
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Priebus emphasized that the convention will have its own rules committee that will propose rules for the convention and the full convention must vote to adopt the rules. And those rules would still need to be approved by the majority of the 2,472 delegates to the convention to take effect.
