Rules vote chaos at Republican Convention exposes fractures in party

The anti-Trump forces now have no options left to stop Trump, except to raise their voices

View of the Arena minutes after the rules vote drama (David Usborne)

Pandemonium broke out briefly inside the Republican Party Convention as an effort by anti-Trump dissidents to force a full floor vote on the rules governing his nomination was summarily squelched by the chairman on the main stage.

The normally highly choreographed proceedings inside the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, veered off the rails abruptly when the chair at its first session on Monday afternoon, US congressman Steve Womack, called a shouted vote to approve or deny the motion for such a floor vote on a rules change. He then said it had been denied and the pro-Trump forces had won.

That in turn set off the chaos, with some factions in the hall instantly chanting, ‘We Want Trump!’, ‘We want Trump!’ to show their support for the billionaire mogul whose ascent to the top of the Republican ticket has been the most controversial in over a generation.

“I have no idea what's going on right now. This is surreal,” said Utah Senator Mike Lee, who had helped lead the efforts to force a state-by-state roll call vote on the rules. Amidst all the ruckus, normally polite Republican delegates were openly yelling at each other.

The drama was almost assuredly the last gasp of the #NeverTrump movement. To prevail and make a floor vote happen they needed to gather signatures from a majority of delegates from seven states. They submitted a claim that they in fact gathered majorities in nine delegations.

Those states were Colorado, Washington state, Utah, Minnesota, Wyoming, Maine, Iowa, Virginia and Washington, D.C. and Alaska. They were aghast when Mr Womack called the shouted vote. He left the stage in the ensuing uproar, only to return moments later to hold a second shouted vote, which they also lost. Mr Womack also alleged that three states had withdrawn their support for the motion.

Even if they had been granted the full floor vote, it isn’t clear that they would have achieved their ultimate goal: a rules change that might have allowed delegates to vote with their consciences to pick the nominee and not according to how their states had voted during the primary process.

Unbinding the delegates may not have resulted in Mr Trump being denied the nomination, which he is due formally to accept on the stage in the Arena on Thursday night. But it would have given the dissidents an opportunity to remind the party and the nation that there remain large pockets of resistance to his take-over of the party.

It is now all but certain that when the moment comes to confirm Mr Trump as the nominee, he will gain the majority of delegates he needs - at 2,472 of them - to make it safely into harbour.

The organisers of the convention at the Republican National Committee, RNC, and within the Trump campaign itself have toiled feverishly for days to see off the various attempts by dissidents to make the rules change happen for fear it would expose a party deeply fractured to Americans watching on television, even if it was never likely Mr Trump would be denied the nomination.