After losing the conscience clause vote very badly, the anti-Trump struggle is being declared dead by Reince Priebus and mocked by Paul Manafort and Trump. But Senator Mike Lee hints that the overhanded way the GOP establishment shut it down may mean a backlash.
Watch below:
From Yahoo News:
In the committee meeting, Lee did not concede that Trump — who is now all but certain to be named the GOP’s nominee next Wednesday night — will in fact be the party’s choice.
“I hope whoever the nominee is going to be this time will in fact win over the delegates,” Lee said. “But rules like this are not going to help that.”
He seemed to hint at the prospect of a demonstration on the floor of the convention, noting that “as we will see in a few days” the “angst” among many anti-Trump delegates or those with serious reservations about Trump “isn’t just going to go away.”
When I asked Lee if there would be an attempted revolt on the floor of the convention, he was evasive, likely because he needs to collect his thoughts and also perhaps keep Trump’s campaign off balance. “I don’t know. I don’t know,” he said. When I asked if he would speak out over the next few days, before the convention starts Monday, to protest the RNC’s strong-armed treatment of the “conscience vote” delegates, he was again noncommittal. “We’ll see,” he said.
But it is a remarkable fact that a sitting U.S. senator would even contemplate such a move. Lee swore that he is not anti-Trump as much as he is committed to making the party’s convention matter.
“The fact that we have a convention in addition to a primary has to mean something,” he said. “Any time you have … a set of primaries and then a convention, I think whoever is going to be the nominee needs to win both.
“I don’t view this as a ‘Never Trump’ effort. That isn’t the point. The point is there are delegates who have yet to be won over. He needs to win them over,” Lee said.
And Trump doesn’t seem like he cares to win anyone over, least of all the Never Trump faction. As as the Latino outreach leader of the Never Trumpers, I don’t wanna hear it anyway.