RNC neutrality challenged on Romney

The Republican National Committee was supposed to play the part of umpire in the GOP presidential primary, but some Republicans are grumbling that the committee wasn’t just calling balls and strikes.

Critics, including supporters of Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich and even neutral Republicans, argue that the national party took steps that helped tilt the contest toward Mitt Romney — an allegation that the RNC rejects but is taking very seriously.

The list of specific grievances ranges from issues that even the party acknowledges are legitimate, to those that they dismiss as desperate fixations from Romney’s flailing rivals.

For example, the committee agrees that some states that went for Romney jumped the line in the primary schedule, a violation of party rules. But RNC defenders shrug off other complaints, like that they undercut Santorum and Gingrich by formatting a delegate tracking list to pad Romney’s tally, by forming a fundraising alliance this week with Romney and by highlighting a rule that would block an unlikely path to the nomination for Gingrich.

And it’s possible they’ll be other clashes in the coming weeks, with the RNC signaling Thursday its opposition to a push by Santorum backers in Texas to alter the rules surrounding that state’s May 29 primary to help the former Pennsylvania Senator.

Critics of the RNC’s handling of the primary are so sensitive to signs that the committee may be pulling for Romney that they’ve even detected evidence of favoritism in the staff ties between his campaign and the RNC — though some concede such speculation veers more toward conspiracy theory than legitimate concern.

Still, taken together, the perception that the primary wasn’t a fair fight could damage the Party’s standing with the big donors and grassroots activists it needs to rally this fall to defeat President Barack Obama. And if Obama wins reelection, that angst could create problems for the RNC and particularly for its chairman, Reince Priebus.

“The chatter is that the fix is in, and that’s created a great deal of consternation,” said Michael Steele, Priebus’s predecessor as RNC chairman.

Steele said he’s been approached “very quietly” by about ten of the RNC’s elected members expressed misgivings “about the influence that the Romney campaign seems to have in dictating the terms of what the RNC is going to do and how it is going to follow the rules.”

A source with a rival GOP campaign said supportive RNC members have raised concerns about a pro-Romney bias within the committee’s full-time leadership, and suggested they were dissatisfied with Priebus’s stewardship.

The RNC defended its neutrality in the race, with spokesman Sean Spicer explaining “we followed the rules exactly as laid out” and questioning Steele’s credibility to comment on RNC affairs given “the state of disaster Mr. Steele left the RNC in.”

The handful of 168 members interviewed for this story all rejected the idea that there was a concerted effort to favor Romney – and one even emailed the next day after talking with Spicer to more assertively defend the RNC.

However, some did acknowledge that individual RNC moves seemed to benefit Romney, conceding that those decisions could be fueling the perception that the national Party had its thumb on the scale.

“I would like to discourage the public from believing that there’s been monkey business going on that’s giving Mitt Romney any kind of an advantage,” said Phyllis Woods, an RNC committeewoman from New Hampshire. Woods, who didn’t endorse in her state’s first-in-the-nation primary, said she’s “concerned that there may be some perception that the RNC or maybe even some state parties anoint candidates.”

But she asserted that’s not the RNC’s fault. “It’s just part of the culture right now that there is a mistrust of the establishment.”

That mistrust is justified, said supporters of Santorum and Gingrich. They complain that the RNC’s interpretation of rules padded Romney’s delegate lead and could stymie Gingrich’s attempt to compete in a brokered convention in Tampa, Fla., this summer – the increasingly far-fetched scenario that the former House Speaker contends is his route to the nomination.

“It’s probably not coincidence” that both interpretations favor Romney, asserted former Pennsylvania congressman Bob Walker, a top Gingrich campaign advisor. “But the fact is that we’ve known all the way along in our campaign that we are faced with an establishment that has made their decision.”

Gingrich’s allies lashed at Priebus late last month after he suggested in an interview on MSNBC’s “Daily Rundown” that “an important rule” of the RNC could bar Gingrich from having his name presented as a candidate at the convention.

The rule states that candidates have to “demonstrate the support of a plurality of the delegates” from “five or more states prior to the presentation of the name of that candidate for nomination.”

Priebus explained “when these candidates are adding up their delegates … they had better make sure they at least have a plurality of five states to make these things happen.”

Gingrich – both at the time and still – has won only two states’ primaries, but his supporters contend that he could cobble together pluralities of delegates even without winning additional contests by wooing uncommitted delegates from states that have already voted.

When Priebus cited the rule in the context of Gingrich’s campaign, it “was disturbing to me, and I think he’s wrong about it,” said Rick Tyler, a former close Gingrich aide now running a super PAC devoted to the former House Speaker. The super PAC, Winning Our Future, is “doing some things on the delegate front,” Tyler said, asserting Priebus failed to take into account Gingrich’s efforts to court uncommitted delegates. “We’re one delegate behind in Mississippi. You don’t think we can get one delegate to say they’ll support Newt?”

The Gingrich and Santorum campaigns found common cause in challenging the RNC’s handling of the allocation of delegates from Arizona and Florida – both of which violated party rules by holding their primaries before this month.

The rules – which were approved during Steele’s tenure in an effort to extend the primary to give voters in more states a chance to weigh in – stipulate that states that hold nominating contests prior to April 1 are required to allocate their delegates proportionally. But Arizona and Florida approved plans allocating all their delegates to the winner of their primaries and, in both cases, that ended up being Romney.

While the campaigns have indicated they intend to challenge the winner-take-all delegate allocations at the convention, the RNC’s delegate tracking list continues to count all 29 delegates from Arizona and all 50 from Florida in Romney’s column.

The tracker indicates its “numbers do not reflect any potential delegate disputes.”

But it nonetheless “gives a bloated view of how many [Romney] has,” said Tim LeFever, an influential conservative activist and top fundraiser for Santorum.

The RNC’s response to such complaints – that they can be addressed through a formal challenge before the convention’s rules committee – doesn’t satisfy Santorum supporters, said LeFever, asserting that the RNC has flouted the spirit of the Steele rule changes to extend the primary. “They’re saying you can still vote but it’s not going to make much of a difference because they’ve been pushing everybody to have this race over before it even gets to your doorstep,” said LeFever, who lives in California, which holds its primary June 5. “In my mind, it’s disenfranchisement.”

Even John Ryder, a national committeeman from Tennessee who helped write the new rules, said “if I were issuing delegate counts either as a member of the media or as a member of the RNC press office, I might put an asterisks next to” the delegates from Florida and Arizona. After talking to RNC spokesman Spicer, though, Ryder emailed back to explain that he was satisfied by the RNC’s disclaimer about how disputes could impact delegate tallies.

But Kim Lehman, an RNC committee member from Iowa who supports Santorum, noted that the RNC delegate tracker is “not even including states like Iowa that Santorum won because they’re unbound.”

Nonetheless, both Ryder and Lehman praised Priebus for trying to accommodate supporters of all the candidates even as the primary process grew contentious.

“I’m not saying that everyone is happy,” said Lehman. “I’m just saying that the way that things have been conducted have been fair.”

The committee has been diligent about both treating the campaigns equally and following its rules, said Spicer. Those rules gave it little flexibility in how it handled the Florida and Arizona violations, Spicer said, explaining the RNC “enacted every punishment available to the RNC under the rules and have made everyone aware of how further action can be taken if it was so desired.”

He cast the dustup over the five-state rule that could bar Gingrich as an effort by Priebus to clarify the rule in response to a question about Gingrich’s strategy, asserting “I’m not sure how reading the rule that is on a website advantages any one candidate.”

News this week about the Romney campaign taking up an RNC offer to form a joint fundraising committee, which was presented as a sign that the Party was “coalescing around” Romney, was much ado about nothing, Spicer said.

He explained that the presidential campaigns of Santorum, Gingrich and even Texas Rep. Ron Paul had been offered similar joint fundraising arrangements during a conference call several weeks ago, and said “three campaigns have expressed interest in doing this.”

After being contacted by Spicer about this story and asked to respond to grumbling about the joint fundraising arrangement, Gingrich campaign spokesman R.C. Hammond called POLITICO to say “we did get approached a couple months ago about that. And if our campaign was at a different point, we might have taken advantage of that.” Hammond said Gingrich doesn’t intend to participate in a joint committee, but he added that generally “Reince has been very good to Newt and has been fair.”

But Tyler called the joint committee offer to Gingrich, Santorum and Paul “too cute by half because Romney is the only person who can afford to do something like that.” Tyler said the deal “has all the imprinteur of ‘the fix is in’” and predicted “if Newt Gingrich were to win the nomination, I think the RNC would get cleaned out.”

Tyler and other Gingrich and Santorum backers cited the staff ties between the RNC and Team Romney, such as RNC outside counsel Tom Josefiak, who serves as the top lawyer for a super PAC run by a pro-Romney operative, and Romney general counsel Ben Ginsberg, who worked for the RNC for years.

“Team Romney has an advantage with someone like Ginsberg, who has been around the RNC for a long time and understands the rules and can make them sound like anything they want,” said Tyler.

Then there’s Rich Beeson, Romney’s political director. He worked as the RNC political director and is a partner in a political data firm co-founded by RNC political director Jeff Larson.

An operative for one of Romney’s GOP rivals said “I know this sounds like Watergate conspiracy theory stuff, but it is all connected. It’s the same sort of establishment crowd who all have concluded that we need Mitt Romney to be the nominee to beat Barack Obama.”

The operative, who was not authorized to discuss the race, has worked at high levels of GOP politics, but said “It has been eye opening to see up close the degree to which the establishment does put its thumb on the scale.”

“The far left elites have taken control of both political parties.”

Go read G. H. W. Bush’s first and only inaugural address with care. It was all there, that far back. There is a Government Party with two wings, and then there are the so called third parties which are wholly ineffective.

DId you catch how Priebus' crowd wants to call it a mess and blame it on Steele?

Irrespective of what he did the fact is Michael presided over the greatest Republican electoral come back in 70 years, and one of the best in history!

That's the kind of mess a replacement team should pick up and run with ~ not use as an excuse for their own incontinence and loss of effort for the next election.

I been tellin' you guys that Priebus and his gang do not know how to be winners, have no idea what winning is about, and they'll drag us down to damnable defeat at the hands of the Obots.

They'll tell us that was Michael Steele's fault as well, or was it Bush ~ yeah, they'll say Bush betrayed us to the Democrats.

The way to get rid of Priebus and that crowd of defeated defeatists is to HOLD A DIFFERENT PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATING CONVENTION.

I"d start with a site better known for weekend gun shows that has lots of parking.

Rich guy gets the nom.

That would explain the Saudi Mole in the WH right now!

What has changed?

The RNC Limited funds Mitt against Mr 0b0tt0s free 24/7 TV RADIO INTERNET propoganda stations?

That's a lot of HOPE if you know whut I mean!

Face it Mitt is a FLOP HORSE!

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