FULL SPEECH: CHARMING! Mike Pence - Paul Ryan intro - Republican National Convention
In reading into the record the names of candidates to be placed into nomination, the committee entered only Donald Trump. Then they let the vote proceed. But from the very first state, it was clear that there was more towhat Ryan had said.
The chair on stage read out Alaskas vote as 28 votes, with 11 delegates bound.
The state chair, after giving the usual go-our-state rah-rah speech, read off the vote totals: 12 votes for Ted Cruz, 11 for Trump, 5 for Marco Rubio.
The secretary then read back the results: 28 votes for Donald Trump.
It happened again in D.C., where Trump received no delegates in the election, and was awarded 19 when totals were reada result that onlyrubbedsalt in the wound generated by aparty platform which also includes language not justdenying statehood for the capitall,but stripping away what little sovereignty its now allowed.
The altered votes also hammered two other states, both of which harbored known Never Trump members. In every case, the states found that no matter how smallor nonexistentTrumps delegate count may have been when announced from the floor, it was different on stage. He got everything.
At the end of the evening, Alaska protested the change in their announced vote totals, and the carefully-protected schedule took a small hit anyway as state and RNC officialshuddled. The secret, which fell to Reince Priebus to reveal, was that Ryan had decided to use old, never-before-deployed rules in which, if only a single candidate is entered into nomination, any unbound delegate is automatically counted as going to that single candidate. Then the RNC went through all the state rules, looking for states where delegates were considered unbound after a candidate suspected his campaign.
The RNC ignored Alaskas protest that they had suspended the rule about considering candidates unbound at their state convention. The count on the stage stood: Trump 28, Alaska Voters: 0.
The odd combination, in which some states were recorded as-read and others had their votes distorted out of recognition, came across as arbitrary and vindictive. Because it was. Ryan might have chosen to go with the bluntbut straightforward rule that only Trump votes would be counted. He might have accepted the votes from all states as-read. But by implementing arcane rules that affected only a handful of states, he generated the impression that the RNC was both violating the rights of states and padding Trumps lead.
Which was true.
Its likely that Ryan chose to impose the odd combination of never-used rules expressly to cut off any effort of delegates to vote their conscience. Any delegate voting against their primary resultsmight have been unboundand automatically tallied for Trump, no matter what name they declared. And in any case, yanking the votes from a few states helped pad out Trumps lead, making his win appear more decisive and better able to withstand any last-minute rebellion.
But what it all made clear was that Ryan was willing to say anything, do anything, and twist any rule not to generate real party unity, but to create the semblance of unity, as well as toinform the delegates that they dont count. That only the RNC counts.
And the RNC now belongs to Trump.
Source: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/7/20/1550194/-Paul-Ryan-sacrificed-integrity-to-Trump-s-ego
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