Twenty-eight. That's the number Dump Trump forces on the Convention Rules Committee need to send a vote on "unbinding" delegates for a vote of conscience to the convention floor. The fireworks begin Thursday, when the 112-member Rules Committee gavels in. We've noted that the RNC is committing more resources to quash the anti-Trump effort than it has working the election in four key swing states. But Politico brings us a reminder of just how much the RNC and Trump are scrambling to keep the vote off the floor.
About a dozen of RNC Chairman Reince Priebus’s most loyal allies who hold seats on the 112-member Rules Committee are working to extinguish the anti-Trump efforts. The existence of the whip team, which includes prominent party figures like Henry Barbour, a party official from Mississippi who is the nephew of former RNC Chairman Haley Barbour, was confirmed by three sources who’ve been briefed on it.
The efforts are extensive enough that the whip team has drafted a map, obtained by POLITICO, of the committee’s seating arrangements that marks where each of the pro-Trump members are sitting and demarcates lines around which committee members each whip is responsible to lobby.
Whether such a "conscience vote" on the convention floor would actually yield a new nominee is almost beside the point for now. The fact that the RNC and Trump are still in this position, just days before the convention opener, is stunning. And regardless of outcome, if the vote actually makes the floor, that alone will upend the convention.