Mike Lee spoke with a Yahoo reporter after the conscience vote last night and was clearly upset, suggesting there could be a backlash considering how the RNC and Trump campaign strong-armed the delegates in the rules meeting last night.
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 Lee said that the putdown of the “conscience” effort could spark a backlash.
“Now if we do it this way, I think the pressure doesn’t just go away. I think doing it that way would have allowed for some of the steam to be released, some of the pressure. This doesn’t just go away,” he said.
Lee, a lawyer who has clerked on the Supreme Court and who keeps his emotions in check, became unusually animated only once in our conversation as he talked about the message from pro-Trump forces that all delegates should line up behind the presumptive nominee.
“Instead of focusing on a message that could truly unite the party, you’ve got all these people in there who are shouting about ‘Darn it, we’ve got to be united,’” Lee said, his voice rising. “‘And to be united we’ve got to shut you guys up. We’ve got to lock up the rules, so that anyone who disagrees with us will be silenced. That’s how we’re going to be unified.’”
Read the full article, where there is much more detail about last night’s events.