Once more, Donald Trump supporters should make sure that they have their own loyal delegates elected to represent them at the Republican National Convention. Yes, they should be respectful and make room for Governors and other office holders and long time party officials. They too should be included in delegations that go to Cleveland. You will need them to help organize and win the general election but don’t neglect making sure that you actually control the delegations from the states you have won during the primary system.

Here is an intriguing letter from one of the Republican National Committeemen from North Dakota.

March 11, 2016

Fellow Republican National Committee Members,

NEWS FLASH: All Republican Delegates to the 2016 Republican National Convention are Unbound!

As most of you know, I have been defending the right of the delegates to the Republican National Convention to vote according to their personal choice in all matters to come before the Republican National Convention, including the vote to nominate the Republican Candidate for President, for several years.

Here is something I recently discovered that most of us did not know, including me! Binding delegates to the results of presidential preference primaries first appeared in the Rules of the Republican Party in 1976.

I write about this in the next chapter of my “Owner’s Manual for Delegates” entitled “Spinning Straw Into Gold”.

“Select, allocate and bind. The fraudulent addition of these three words to the Rules of the Republican Party in the 2008 Convention, as detailed in Chapter One, is the political equivalent of “spinning straw into gold”.

Without the use of force to bind the votes of delegates to the results of the primary process, primaries are nearly worthless “beauty contests”.

This chapter explores the history of “binding” in the Republican presidential nomination process, and reveals some stunning facts.

Delegates have been bound only once in the history of the Republican Party. In 1976, the Ford campaign, afraid of losing “pledged” delegates to Reagan forces and having the strength of delegate numbers needed, forced the adoption of the “Justice Resolution” which amended the convention rules to bind the delegates to cast their convention votes according to the results of binding primaries. This historic event was the first convention in the history of the Republican Party where the delegates were denied the freedom to vote as they wished in the nomination vote for President. And, 1976 was also the last time delegates have been bound by convention rules to cast their votes according to the results of binding primary elections, since the 1980 convention rescinded the Justice Resolution entirely restoring the prohibition of binding. This history has huge implications for 2016, since it calls attention to the fact that the convention rules of the Republican Party do not bind delegates to cast their votes according to the results of binding primaries.

Therefore, as “spinning straw into gold” is to primaries, “Rumplestiltskin” is to conventions. Delegates to the 2016 convention are not bound.” Before you rush to ask “what does the Counsel”s Office say about this” I offer this statement from that office:

“One of the important rules changes over the last 50 years has been the unit rule prohibited…that change was made so that an individual delegate can vote his or her conscience.” (transcript, RNC Standing Committee on the Rules, January 19, 2006 pp 93-94)

That statement was made by Tom Josefiak to the members of the RNC Rules Committee as part of an orientation session for Rules Committee members. Mr. Josefiak was part of a panel of expert presenters that also included Ben Ginsberg, Mike Duncan, and Morton Blackwell. The meeting was presided over by David Norcross, chairman of the RNC Rules Committee.

And, the rule Mr. Josefiak referred to is current Rule 38, Unit Rule.

That’s right. Every delegate to the 2016 Republican National Convention is a completely free agent, free to vote for the candidate of their choice on every ballot at the convention in Cleveland in July. Every delegate is a Superdelegate!

In Chapter One, I discussed the fraudulent process that was employed to insert the words “select, allocate and bind” into the section of the Rules of the Republican Party that deal with the election of delegates to the national convention.

The rest of the chapter, Spinning Straw Into Gold, will provide much more detail to expose the actors and the methods that have been employed over the past several presidential nominations to Spin Straw Into Gold by stealing the right to choose the party’s presidential nominee and transferring that right to the Political Industrial Complex who have turned primaries into gold.

We are the Republican National Committee, this has been done on our watch and there is nothing we can do about it until the 2016 convention.

What happens then is an open question that can only be answered by the delegates that will constitute the highest authority of the Republican Party of the United States, the Republican National Convention of 2016.

Curly Haugland

Republican National Committeeman for North Dakota