Was There a 2020 Republican National Convention?

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  Open letter to all members of the Republican Party

WITHOUT A CONVENTION, THERE IS NO PARTY!

From: Curly Haugland

Date: April 23, 2022

WITHOUT A CONVENTION, THERE IS NO PARTY!

This is not simply an expression or a matter of opinion. It is just a matter of fact. The Republican Party is not a permanent organization. There is only one Republican Party of the United States. The ultimate authority of the Republican Party is the quadrennial national convention of delegates.

THERE WAS NO REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION IN 2020!

Each state and territory has a subordinate “state committee” and within each there are subordinate district, county or precinct committees.  All such committees are subcommittees of the parent association.

The Republican Party has no constitution or bylaws.

The governing document of the Republican Party is the current edition of Robert’s Rules of Order which is supplemented by special rules of order, the Rules of the Republican Party, adopted at the quadrennial national convention.

The Republican Party is a deliberative association of individuals who choose to associate with like minded people to advocate for their shared political philosophy.

HOW DOES THE FAILURE TO CONVENE A NATIONAL CONVENTION IMPACT THE PARTY?

The failure to convene the national convention in 2020 has caused, by the terms of the Rules of the Republican Party and Robert’s Rules of Order, a total LAPSE of the authority of the Republican National Committee to exist.

The authority to manage the affairs of the Republican Party is assigned to the Republican National Committee when the REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION DELEGATES vote to adopt the Rules of the Republican Party that are only effective until the next convention.

The individual delegates to each convention decide who is eligible to be seated as a permanent delegate, they vote to adopt the Rules of the Republican Party, and they vote to adopt the party platform.

In 2020, delegates from each state and territory were chosen to be the official members of the quadrennial convention in 2020.

Those individual members, had they been allowed to assemble, would have constituted the highest authority of the Republican Party.

Among their rights and duties was the right to nominate the Republican presidential candidate for 2020, the duty to develop and adopt the official Republican Party Platform for 2020, and the duty to create the Rules of the Republican Party to govern the 2020 Republican National Convention and the rules to govern the party from the end of the convention until the next quadrennial convention in 2024.

Unfortunately, there was no Republican National Convention in 2020.

Therefore, there are no Rules of the Republican Party.

Only the Rules of the Republican Party can authorize the creation of the Republican National Committee as well as the subordinate state and local committees.
Thus, in a strict sense, all levels of the Republican Party are currently operating without authority.

HOW DOES THIS LAPSE OF AUTHORITY AFFECT THE OPERATION OF THE RNC AND STATE PARTIES?

The answer to this question is dependent on the relationship between unauthorized Republican committees and the FEC laws that require committee authorization.

HOW DOES THIS LAPSE OF AUTHORITY AFFECT THE FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS OF INDIVIDUAL MEMBERS OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY?

This lapse of authority absolutely and completely nullifies the First Amendment civil rights of individual members of the Republican Party.

The duly elected delegates to the 2020 Republican National Convention lost their liberty when the staff of the Republican National Committee initiated a process to cancel the convention.

The RNC Counsel’s Office prepared what they called “Rule 37(e) National Convention Procedures” to initiate cancellation of the 2020 convention.

The elected delegates to the 2020 Republican National Convention were simply dismissed as irrelevant and unnecessary and deprived of the opportunity to exercise their First Amendment guaranteed right and duty to govern the Republican Party.

But the infringement by the RNC staff on the civil rights of the members of the party was not limited to the cancellation of the convention.

An earlier and more serious violation of the civil rights of members occurred with the approval of the delegate selection process for 2020, beginning in 2018.  

This is when the RNC Counsel’s Office and the Trump campaign conducted a coordinated effort to influence and control the delegate selection process of each state and territory.

The ultimate violation was the RNC Counsel’s Office  instruction to states to “fix” the Rule 16 filings by imposing a “binding” requirement in the delegate selection process, effectively turning convention delegates into robots.

“Binding” was inserted into what are known as “Rule 16 filings” by each state. The RNC Counsel’s Office refused to approve Rule 16 filings that did not include “binding”delegates to vote according to primary results.

The proof that this was an intentional act can be found in the the official transcripts of the 2016 Republican National Convention Rules Committee and also in the living color video of the proceedings thanks to CSPAN’s recording of the entire meeting.

The 2016 Republican National Convention adopted rules that allowed only the delegates to the 2016 convention to bind themselves to vote according to results of previously held primaries.

It is because of my experience as a member of the Republican National Committee, the RNC Rules Committee and the 2008, 2012 and 2016 Convention Rules Committees, that I began to monitor the RNC Counsel’s Office and Trump campaign efforts to rig the 2020 convention.

 I knew, from experience, that the RNC Counsel’s Office has no regard for the First Amendment rights of members of the party.  Members of the political consultant class and the rest of the Political Industrial Complex also willfully advocate First Amendment nullification and forcefully advocate for Critical Primary Theory.

If the delegates to the convention are free to vote their conscience, what value is there in conducting an outrageously expensive primary process?

Lawyers and consultants make a lot of money on primaries!

There was never any serious, organized effort intended to cause any distress for the reelection campaign of President Trump in 2020.

 There was no doubt that President Trump would be nominated at the convention to run for a second term as President of the United States.

But, many individuals worked very hard to become delegates to the 2020 convention so they would have an opportunity to serve on the Convention Rules Committee to eliminate the “binding” language contained in Rule 16 filings that the supporters of Critical Primary Theory would use to try to continue the binding fraud into 2024.

The 2020 Rule 16 filings were required to be submitted to the RNC Counsel’s Office prior to October 1, 2019.   Obviously, the COVID virus was not yet an issue.

On October 2, 2019, a New York Times article featured Trump campaign operatives boasting about their success rigging Rule 16 language in 37 states.

Since that time, I have made repeated attempts to get access to the Rule 16 filings from each state for 2020.  The staff of the RNC has refused to provide this information to either Shane Goettle, the ND Republican National Committeeman, or to Doyle Webb who, at the time of his denied request, was the General Counsel to the RNC.

Requests for this information sent directly to Ronna McDaniel have received NO response.

While all that happened in 2020 is moot now, the impact of the failure to hold a convention in 2020 to develop rules to govern the party until 2024 cannot be ignored.

The Counsel’s Office has demonstrated, in 2020, that they disregarded the 2016 Rules of the Republican Party that clearly established that “binding” can only apply to the convention at hand.

Without a 2020 convention, it is fair to assume that the RNC Counsel’s Office will again fraudulently require states to include “binding” in the Rule 16 filings that will govern delegate selection in 2024.

Again, this will be attempted for the singular purpose of instituting Critical Primary Theory, thus substituting primary “voters” for convention delegates in the Presidential nomination process.

This outrageous fraud infringes on the First Amendment right of the individual delegates to the Republican National Convention to nominate the Republican Presidential candidate, and assigns their right to primary “voters”, who may not even be Republicans!

SO, WE HAVE A PROBLEM.  WHAT IS THE SOLUTION?

My years of service on the RNC and on Republican National Convention Rules Committees gave me the opportunity to observe how the primary process has perverted the entire concept of political parties.

Due to the emergence of a “presumptive” nominee long before the convention, the time between “presumption” and “nomination” has been used to corrupt the party conventions.

State party organizations, anxious to curry favor with the nominee, have included ridiculous provisions in their individual state’s Rule 16 filings that allow the nominee to choose the delegates from many states.  

When, as in 2016 and 2020, enough delegates are beholden to the nominee, the campaign staff takes over the operation of the convention.

Such was the case in 2016.

I was at the scene of the crime.

We were told that the Convention Rules Committee would meet for a minimum of two days; possibly two and a half days.

To keep this short, on just the “binding” question, this is how it went down. The rules committee typically addresses rules in numerical order; in 2016 it was Rules 1-43.  

Rules are divided into three sections.  (1). Rules to govern the party between conventions; (2); rules to govern the selection of delegates to the NEXT convention; and (3). rules for the convention at hand.

In 2016, provisions for “binding” were placed in Rule 16; that section of the rules that govern delegate selection for the NEXT convention.

At the very end of the FIRST DAY of the rules committee meeting, “binding” was introduced to Rule 37; in that section of the rules that govern the PRESENT convention.

This confused some members of the committee who argued against placing binding in two sections of the rules governing different time frames.

The second day of the rules committee meeting would certainly have  resolved this conflict.

But, tomorrow never happened!  The campaign controlled the meeting.  The meeting was adjourned.  

The conflicting provisions were intentionally allowed to remain in the rules.
Rule 16 must contain a “binding” provision to preserve the value of primaries.

Over time, the progressive notion that primaries are more “democratic” than party conventions has largely destroyed the First Amendment protections of party members.

Already, the Political Industrial Complex is gaslighting the public in advance of the 2024 nomination process.

The transcript of the 2016 Convention Rules Committee includes my statement to the committee expressing my displeasure with the curtailed agenda.

I had prepared an amendment to provide for a MID TERM CONVENTION of the Republican Party to allow rules governing the next convention to be developed free from the heavy hand of the presumptive nominee in the previous convention.

The lawyers and consultants won that round by abruptly ending the Rules Committee meeting deliberations at the end of day one.

There has been no Republican National Convention Rules Committee since that day in July, 2016.

COVID 19 and the resulting cancellation of the 2020 Republican National Convention has left the Republican Party with NO RULES to govern the delegate selection process for 2024.

PRIMARY OR CONVENTION?  WHO DECIDES?

Republican National Convention delegates decide!

At this moment, the highest and only authority of the Republican Party is a national convention of delegates chosen at state conventions according to the provisions for convening conventions contained in Robert’s Rules of Order.

The Republican Party caught COVID-19 in 2020.

WILL IT SURVIVE?

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