However, Mr. Trump believes the system is rigged against him - pointing to Colorado, where Ted Cruz got all the delegates last weekend without a traditional vote by the folks.Bill is simply LYING here. I have written tweets on this. The March 1 precinct caucuses were fully described in several newspapers; interested Republicans were invited to attend. The caucus system in Colorado has been in place for several cycles:
Beginning in 1832, party leaders have selected the candidates.
Today, the delegate system is chaos with each state deciding what kind of selection process will take place.
So in Colorado, the Republican Party chieftains select the delegates, not the folks.
Talking Points believes that the system needs to be reformed. But it's not going to happen this year.
Since the 2004 primary and caucus season — and from 1912 to 1988 before that — here is how the system worked: Republicans met in local precinct caucuses, which they did this year. People ran for delegate to the county assemblies (convention), often stating which presidential candidate they would support during the assemblies. The county assemblies picked delegates to district and state assemblies. Candidates running for national convention delegate could, optionally, bind themselves to a candidate or say what candidate they would support. The assemblies would elect the delegates.Now Colorado has held a NONBINDING straw poll in the last 3 cycles. But the RNC changed the rules:
RNC rules instituted in 2012 said that any state that holds a preference poll in conjunction with their caucuses must bind delegates according to the results. The new rule was 16(a)(1):CR points out that the GOP did have binding primaries in 1992-2000, an expensive taxpayer-paid system accompanied by a DECLINE in voter participation. The caucus system is different in the sense you select delegates, not candidates, who may or may not be pledged to a candidate. After the precinct/neighborhood caucus, selected delegates then go through aggregate (county/district/state) assemblies,
Any statewide presidential preference vote that permits a choice among candidates for the Republican nomination for President of the United States in a primary, caucuses, or a state convention must be used to allocate and bind the state’s delegation to the national convention in either a proportional or winner-take-all manner, except for delegates and alternate delegates who appear on a ballot in a statewide election and are elected directly by primary voters.
In addition, this account by a state Republican official provides an alternative discussion, explaining he had no dog in the fight. But probably one of the more compelling discussions is from a compelling Laura Carno National Review piece, which pointed out that she had participated in the process, and it was hardly an establishment process, but included other races in addition to the Trump/Cruz showdown:
Plenty has already been written about the organizational advantage that Ted Cruz has demonstrated in the race for national delegates — smartly, the Cruz campaign had been on the ground in Colorado for eight months, whereas the Trump campaign hired its first ground operative last week — but few have noted that the rules in Colorado yielded a broader win for the grassroots over the elites.
On Friday, April 8, I attended the Fifth Congressional District Assembly, to which I was elected as a delegate after I attended my neighborhood caucus in March. In a surprise nomination from the floor, 32-year old Calandra Vargas was nominated to challenge sitting congressman Doug Lamborn (who had been unanimously nominated for re-election). When delegate balloting was completed, it was revealed that Vargas had won 58 percent of the vote. Representative Doug Lamborn, by contrast, was left with only 35 percent. (The balance of the votes went to another floor nomination.) Vargas will be listed first on the ballot — a huge advantage for any candidate.
The following day at the state assembly — to which I had also been elected a delegate — we heard speeches from ten U.S. Senate candidates who chose to go through the caucus and assembly process. An additional four candidates for Senate chose to bypass the assembly, and petition directly on to the ballot. Of those who attended the state assembly, state senator Tim Neville was the clear favorite. El Paso County Commissioner Darryl Glenn made his unexpectedly fiery nominating speech. Glenn received a remarkable 70 percent of the delegate votes, while Neville received just 18 percent. Because they were kept below the 30 percent threshold, Neville and the others were kept off the ballot.QED, in your face, Bill O'Reilly. So much for your ability to fact check your talking points. The decision to abandon the straw poll was made in August and did NOT constitute a change in how Colorado selected its delegates--through a grassroots process, not political backrooms. They canceled a meaningless straw poll--which would have forced a change in delegate selection from the grassroots under NEW RNC rules. Basically Cruz campaign staffers had been mobilized for months in the state and worked to promote Cruz each step of the way in this layered process.
Trump is an amateur. He has more resources than all other candidates, including Cruz. After taking Florida, he probably thought he could cruise to the nomination. He probably thought Colorado was more trouble than it was worth--he wasn't going to win anyway and probably would end up with a handful of delegates. But he's beginning to panic, realizing he needs to win a majority of remaining delegates. He probably knows that he's done if he doesn't come to Cleveland with 1237 delegates. I think Trump realizes that he better grab all the April delegates he can, and what better way to drive his cultists to the polls than with this contrived "unfair" Colorado process, that the mythical establishment, which couldn't block his candidacy, is out to screw him and the cultists. The gullibility of Bill O'Reilly speaks for itself.
