Delegates Wouldn’t Let RNC Change Rules Between Conventions

After losing 2 to 1 in the Republican National Committee on a vote to give the RNC the power to change party rules between conventions, conservatives defeated the proposal in the Rules Committee of the Republican National Convention by and equally large margin.

A “Commission on the Presidential Nomination Process,” headed by former Sen. Bill Brock (Tenn.), had proposed giving the RNC the rules-changing power. But as Virginia National Committeeman Morton Blackwell, a Rules Committee leader, noted, this idea, which would have transferred power from popularly elected convention delegates to the less representative RNC, was derived from the elitist McGovernite proposals that moved the Democratic Party dramatically to the left 30 years ago.

Conservative argues that giving the RNC the power to change the rules in the middle of the game was the essence of unfairness. It would mean, in effect, that there were no rules at all, and that in each election cycle the party establishment could rig the presidential nominating process to the advantage of its preferred candidate.

There were two big differences between the RNC meeting, where the changes were originally approved, and the convention, where they were stopped. The RNC is composed of national politicians of establishment mold, while the convention Rules Committee is composed of grassroots party activists and local party officials, who are generally more conservative. The latter have no interest in handing over the power they enjoy at the convention to national leaders who will tell them what to do.

Also, the RNC’s power grab happened to be attached to the so-called Delaware plan to reform the primary process—a plan that actually had much conservative support. But the Delaware plan was opposed by large states because it put small states first in the primary schedule, and by Bush campaign officials because they feared it would stretch out the nominating process in 2004 and open the door to an insurgency.

That created a working alliance between the conservative activists, the big states and the Bush campaign to defeat the power grab, even if the Delaware plan went down with it.

But it was not all good news for the conservatives. The RNC Commission—again, following McGovern—also proposed making RNC members automatic “super-delegates” to the national convention, overturning long-established party rules that all delegates must be elected. Not only did the 164-member RNC recommend that its members be automatically anointed as delegates, but it also offered a delegate formula that would create 214 at-large delegates (presumably party muckity mucks).

The GOP had to go all the way to the Supreme Court to legitimize its current delegate formula, which rewards states for winning presidential and other elections. Its formula was challenged for not meeting “one man, one vote” constitutional standards and survived only because there was a “rational basis” for the allocation—that is, winning elections. Blackwell and his allies argued that if the new “super delegates” recommended by the RNC were not defeated, the party would spend the next decade in court defending them—with the court in the end reversing the new allocations. The allure of extra delegates, however, proved too strong for the conservatives to defeat.

The Republican Party prospered and built its governing majority as a reaction to the radical takeover of the Democratic Party by George McGovern and his rabid supporters. Following their tumultuous 1968 convention in Chicago, the Democrats created delegate quotas to reward the major liberal elements in the party and made “diversity” the defining characteristic. Many forget that at its 1972 convention, Republicans almost adopted the same McGovernite quotas. A California governor named Ronald Reagan led the coalition that opposed the changes.

Rules Have Consequences

Party rules may seem arcane, but they can have a dramatic impact on the nature of a political party, determining who gets nominated, what the party stands for, and whether it wins elections. Conservatives prevailed in the most important rules debates at the 2000 convention because they have committed activists who want to preserve responsible rules. At a Democratic rules meeting a few years ago, a congressman acknowledged that one of the reasons for the GOP’s success was that its rules were fair and stable and he implored his party to follow suit. Ill-considered reform-for reform sake is dangerous.

In making his proposal, Chairman Brock conceded that “I’ve never voted for a reform that didn’t come back to bite me.” Fortunately for the Republicans, reform efforts this year did not bite too deeply.

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Donald Devine, former director Of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is a columnist and a Washington-based policy consultant and a Vice Chairman for the American Conservative Union.