The GOP convention delegates elected for Donald Trump and Ted Cruz should unite to exclude establishment gate-crashers from the 2016 nomination process, says Pat Buchanan, the former staffer for Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan who has long championed populist pro-American policies.
The delegates can exclude the establishment’s drop-in candidates by reinserting “Rule 40” into the special rules for the 2016 convention, Buchanan says.
Rule 40 was inserted into the 2012 rules to block challenger Rep. Ron Paul, and it requires that each convention candidate must have won eight state primaries. If the Cruz and Trump delegates revive Rule 40, the establishment won’t be able to deliver the nomination to their favorites, such as House Speaker Paul Ryan or 2012 candidate Gov. Mitt Romney.
The 2016 rules will be drafted the week prior to the 2016 convention at a meeting of delegates who are now being selected at low-key state primaries.
Trump has gotten away with his insubordination and shown, with his crowds, votes, and victories, that millions of alienated Americans detest the Washington establishment and relish his defiance.
Trump has denounced the trade treaties, from NAFTA to GATT to the WTO and MFN for China, that have de-industrialized America, imperil our sovereignty and independence, and cost millions of good jobs …
Trump and Cruz, though bitter enemies, are both despised by the establishment. Yet both have a mutual interest: insuring that one of them, and only one of them, wins the nomination. No one else.
And if they set aside grievances, and act together, they can block any establishment favorite from being imposed on the party, as was one-worlder Wendell Willkie, “the barefoot boy of Wall Street,” in 1940.
All Trump and Cruz need do is instruct their delegates to vote to retain Rule 40 from the 2012 convention. Rule 40 declares that no candidate can be placed in nomination who has failed to win a majority of the delegates in eight states.
Trump has already hit that mark. Cruz almost surely will. But no establishment favorite has a chance of reaching it.
With Cruz and Trump delegates voting to retain Rule 40, they can guarantee no Beltway favorite walks out of Cleveland as the nominee — and that Ted Cruz or Donald Trump does.
No matter who wins in Cleveland, the establishment must lose.
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