Rience Priebus Meeting Privately With #NeverTrump Leaders to Discuss Compromise on Delegate-Unbinding Rule
Multiple Outlets Confirming: It's Pence

At least that's how I take this.

Barely two hours into the much-anticipated meeting of the Convention Rules Committee, a backroom deal may be in the works.

According to two sources, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus and top RNC officials are huddling privately with Senator Mike Lee, Virginia Committeeman Morton Blackwell, and leaders of the Never Trump movement to discuss a procedural compromise that would allow for gimmick-free votes on anti-Trump measures in exchange for their cooperation in not gumming up the works and prolonging the Rules Committee meeting unnecessarily....

Kendal Unruh, the Colorado delegate who has led the charge to allow convention delegates to vote their conscience — essentially unbinding them from supporting presumptive nominee Donald Trump — is part of the meeting. So is Ken Cucinnelli, a Cruz ally who is leading the charge to restructure certain guidelines of the GOP’s nominating process. It’s unclear whether anti-Trump representatives will agree to the deal.

...

UPDATE II (11 a.m.): According to multiple Rules Committee sources, the word is that Unruh, who has organized the anti-Trump rebellion, can’t get anywhere near 28 votes without the aid of Cuccinelli, who is separately rallying support for changes to the Republican Party’s nominating process. Sources say Cuccinelli has realized Unruh won’t have the numbers even with him whipping on her behalf, and is open to brokering an agreement with Priebus under which he wins some modifications in exchange for backing down from the anti-Trump measures and allowing the rest of the Rules Committee meeting to proceed quickly and without the incessant offering of new amendments.

Read the whole thing. I can't excerpt it all. A major point is that there is a firm 1 o'clock deadline, which actually favors the anti-Trump people; if there is no deal reached by then, the anti-Trump forces can begin offering their anti-Trump amendments, one after the other, slowing the whole thing down.

Meanwhile.... A report says that Trump's kids -- Ivanka, I guess, most of all -- have won, and Trump will take their counsel and name Mike Pence as his running mate.

Confirmed By Several Outlets:

posted by Ace at 12:18 PM

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