Let's hope this isn't the way a Trump administration will run things
I'm hearing the words "brownshirts", "nazi", "illegal", "cheaters" and worse being uttered on the floor of the RNC. It looks like the riots might be in the convention hall, not outside.
Critics of Donald Trump had attempted to force the vote and submitted the signatures they believed were necessary to do so, but after holding a voice vote on the rules, Rep. Steve Womack declared the rules approved and moved on.
Womack left the stage amid an uproar, only to return to the stage moments later for a second voice vote. He again declared that the 'ayes' had won, again to protests from the crowd.
Forcing a roll call vote requires support from the majorities of seven delegations. Anti-Trump delegates submitted what they said were a majority of signatures from at least 9: Colorado, Washington state, Utah, Minnesota, Wyoming, Maine, Iowa, Virginia and Washington, D.C. The also claimed that Alaska had provided signatures as well.
But Womack, after the second voice vote, said on stage that three states had withdrawn from the roll call effort, leaving it short of the support needed.
The vote thwarted and the convention rules deemed approved, the convention moved on to a discussion of the official party platform.
The anti-Trump delegates opposed the rules and hoped to vote them down in the roll call vote. Their ultimate goal is to get a new set of rules that allow delegates to vote against Trump even if they are pledged to him based on the results of their state's primary or caucus rules, though they appear unlikely to have the votes to do either.
Forcing a vote on the rules would have temporarily thrown the convention into a lobbying frenzy, with delegates hoping to deny Trump the nomination work to convince a majority of the convention’s 2,472 delegates to reject the party’s rules and adopt new language that would help them sideline Trump.
Even if they'd likely have lost, the Never Trump delegates wanted a vote to display the lingering anti-Trump sentiment in the party — likely from hundreds of delegates — at a time GOP leaders and the Trump campaign are struggling to project unity.
Critics blasted the procedural moves to block the vote.
"I have never in all my life, certainly in six years in the United States Senate, prior to that as a lifelong Republican, never seen anything like this," said Utah Sen. Mike Lee. "There is no precedent for this in parliamentary procedure. There is no precedent for this in the rules of the Republican National Convention. We are now in uncharted territory. Somebody owes us an explanation. I have never seen the chair abandoned like that. They vacated the stage entirely."
