Morton Blackwell, Virginia’s Republican National Committeeman, has urged that The Rules of the Republican Party be amended at the party’s meeting this week in open letters to Chairman Reince Preibus, Secretary Demetra DeMonte, and fellow Republican National Committee (RNC) members.
The amendment would return the Party’s rules to those passed unanimously by the Republican National Committee at the 2012 Republican convention -- undoing changes made by the Convention Rules Committee in Tampa to centralize power in the RNC. Those changes included an increase in the number of states a presidential candidate must win to have his or her name formally placed in nomination before the convention.
Mr. Blackwell and prominent conservatives, including Mark Levin and Michelle Malkin, previously criticized the 2012 rule changes as a “power grab.” The efforts were led by Ben Ginsberg, a Convention Rules Committee member from D.C. who represented himself as the spokesman for the Romney campaign at the convention.
“Instead of further centralizing the Republican Party, we should welcome newcomers and treat them fairly, politely, and cordially,” Mr. Blackwell wrote in his letter to RNC members. “I know that, if passed, my motion to ‘de-Ginsberg’ our party rules will be greeted enthusiastically by newcomers we want to join us in our efforts to defeat the plans President Obama and his leftist allies are wreaking on our country.”
Mr. Blackwell was first elected as Virginia’s Republican National Committeeman in 1988. He serves on the RNC’s Standing Committee on Rules and has attended every meeting of the Republican National Conventions’ Rules Committees since 1972.
