By Quin, from NRO’s The Corner.
Two blog posts on the GOP convention:
First, I explain why delegates have “conscience rights” (read the full post here):
If there is one basic tenet of representative democracy, it is that a vote not cast for somebody or something should not, cannot be counted as if it had been cast for that person or proposition. But the Republican National Committee, in its infinite ethical confusion, threatens at the party’s national convention this month to count delegate abstentions as if they are votes for Donald Trump. This is not just bizarre, but utterly fraudulent, wholly unethical and, were the party not technically a private organization, would be criminally punishable. Now comes conservative stalwart Clint Cline, writing at The Pulse, to defend the right of delegates to vote their consciences or, as conscientious objectors, to abstain from voting…..
[Later in my piece:] The word “delegate” has a meaning. By its very definition, it means someone to whom others have delegated some decision-making responsibility. Delegates are human beings, not bits of computer data (or, in old-fashioned parlance, not “rubber stamps”)……
Second, I explain why it is crucial to remember that Donald Trump is not yet the Republican nominee for president. [Read the whole thing here]:
[Trump’s Republican primary opponents] did not, though, pledge to support the presumptive nominee. Donald Trump is not the nominee yet. That’s the whole point of the delegate revolt that is brewing: to stop Trump from becoming the nominee……
