Anti-Trump Republicans will make their final stand this week, a long-shot bid to hijack the rules of the Republican Party and deny Donald Trump the presidential nomination.

But as GOP delegates converge on Cleveland to begin the business portion of their national convention, that marquee struggle is just one subplot in a drama that will determine the future of the party. Delegates will also weigh whether to embrace Trump’s brand of populism and protectionism, to ban outsiders from voting in GOP primaries or to reconfigure the power of the Republican National Committee — as well as how, and for whose benefit, they want to craft the rules for their next presidential primary.


Those fights will play out in two powerful committees of delegates. The Platform Committee, which meets Monday and Tuesday, will revisit the core tenets of the Republican Party’s policy vision. The Rules Committee, which meets Wednesday and Thursday, will determine the procedures that govern the convention a week later — but also establish the 2020 primary rules.

And at every turn, factions loyal to Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas will be jockeying for supremacy.

Here’s what to watch for.

THE RULES COMMITTEE



The meeting of this 112-delegate panel is where the convention’s most dramatic confrontation is expected to go down. Here, anti-Trump delegates led by Colorado’s Kendal Unruh are scraping together support for a plan that would guarantee delegates the option to vote their conscience when picking the party’s presidential nominee — rather than adhere to the results of primaries and caucuses. Such a change, they suggest, could cripple Trump’s chances of becoming the GOP nominee.

But Trump supporters won’t be sitting still. The mogul’s allies will be carrying their own pro-Trump proposals aimed at staving off the rebellion. In addition, the panel will be the forum for restructuring the party after its deeply divisive and bitter primary. If Trump isn’t elected in November, this committee’s rules could sway the 2020 primary process.

In 2012, Mitt Romney’s Rules Committee guru, attorney Ben Ginsberg, helped muscle through amendments that consolidated the power of the RNC and elbowed aside Ron Paul backers hoping to place his name into nomination. This time, Trump is relying on a team of supporters, including New Jersey’s Bill Palatucci, to carry his favored changes and block hostile ones.

Fighting for Cruz’s priorities? Utah Sen. Mike Lee, a conservative stalwart who could play an outsize role in countering Trump’s favored rule changes.

The key issues:

The conscience clause: Unruh is proposing a change to the rules that would effectively free delegates to vote for any candidate for president. She and her allies argue that it’s actually a superfluous effort: the rules already permit delegates to vote freely. But an ongoing dispute has left that argument up for debate. Unruh’s organization, Free the Delegates, has been predicated on stopping Trump from winning the nomination. But so far few Rules Committee delegates have publicly indicated support, and dozens have spoken out forcefully against her effort. The dilemma: Though hundreds of GOP delegates at the convention personally oppose Trump, many are unwilling to vote against him for the nomination because he won more votes than any of his rivals.

Though Unruh has argued that failure in the Rules Committee doesn’t preclude delegates from dumping Trump on the convention floor, pro-Trump Rules Committee members may seek to plug any gaps in the rules that are open to interpretation. If pro-Trump delegates affirm that delegates are, in fact, bound to support Trump, they could dramatically reduce the likelihood of a floor fight before it happens.

Closed primaries: Republicans have long fended off nationwide attempts to shut out Democrats and independents from their primaries, deferring to each state to pick the process it prefers. Even a small-scale effort in 2012 to award bonus delegates to states that embrace closed GOP primaries failed. Many Republican state leaders have supported open primaries as a tool to bring in new voters. Top-down bans on these primaries by the national party would undercut the Republican belief in deferring to states, they argued at the time.

But others contend that these policies have allowed Democrats to meddle in Republican affairs. Trump, who thrived on crossover voting by independents and even some Democrats, might not have fared as well in an election composed entirely of closed primaries, where Cruz tended to excel.

This year, the ingredients are all in place for a policy shift. RNC Chairman Reince Priebus has long supported closed primaries. Backers of Cruz’s candidacy, often at odds with Priebus and the GOP establishment, see common ground here because a GOP-only primary system is likely to tilt the presidential nomination process in their favor next time. A slew of Trump supporters have hinted they’d support closed primaries as well.

The primary calendar: Nevada’s days as an early state may be over. The caucus state has been hobbled by procedural errors and controversies for the past three presidential cycles, and goodwill among fellow early-state leaders in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina has run out. In fact, RNC members from the three latter states held a recent conference call to shore up their strategy for maintaining their early-state status. Nevada wasn’t included. GOP leaders are eyeing Colorado or Arizona as a replacement instead.

But the other early states aren’t necessarily safe. Rules Committee chairwoman Enid Mickelsen has proposed rotating early states like Iowa and New Hampshire with other regional peers. Mickelsen told POLITICO she no longer intends to introduce the plan herself now that she’s running the committee, but it’s likely to be proposed by her allies on the panel and could force early-state leaders to defend their turf.

The rule change to end rule changes: Oregon RNC Committeeman Solomon Yue has introduced language that would delay any rule changes from taking effect until the 2020 convention. This would set a new precedent to delay the impact of any significant rule changes and sap some of the urgency behind the committee’s decision-making.

Critics note that this stands in direct conflict with traditional rules of order: The delegates would be setting policies for a convention governed by a whole new set of delegates. But it would also remove the lingering fear that delegates who oppose the party’s presumptive nominee could engineer a last-second change to upend the entire process. The thinking, Yue notes, is that delegates would be free to propose meaningful rule changes without being accused of trying to undercut the current nominee.

Delegate selection: One issue certain to be revisited is the manner in which delegates are selected. In 2012, Rules Committee members fended off a proposal that would’ve allowed victorious primary candidates to choose their delegates, an attempt to ensure that the presumptive nominee isn’t blindsided by disloyal delegates at the convention. But objectors noted that this is precisely the kind of top-down control that the party abhors, granting enormous influence over the centuries-old party to a candidate who would, at most, be around for eight years. However, throughout the 2016 primary, the furious fight between Trump and Cruz has drawn renewed attention to the potential for “Trojan horse” delegates — those who purport to support one candidate while secretly backing another.

THE PLATFORM COMMITTEE

Every four years, this committee of 112 delegates crafts the policy vision and goals meant to represent the official Republican Party positions on social, economic and foreign policy issues. It’s a typically toothless document, one that often carries a conservative flavor because of the tilt of the party activists prominent at the convention. But in this year of Trump’s apostasy on core GOP principles, from trade to abortion to international alliances, it’s a chance for delegates to either wrench the party toward its presumptive nominee — or rebuke him.

In fact, Cruz loyalists, led by former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, are planning a high-profile effort to preserve the platform's conservative bent from what they suggest may be efforts to undermine it.

Because the platform is not binding, it’s unclear whether Trump intends to spend any capital at the convention to moderate it — he’ll need whatever juice he’s got to fend off the delegate insurrection against his candidacy. But Indiana delegate Jim Bopp, a conservative who helped craft the 2012 platform and is intimately involved in the 2016 effort, said Trump has confirmed that he backs efforts to produce a conservative platform. “He wants to run on a conservative platform,” Bopp said. “I don’t call that hands-off. I call that an endorsement.”

Committee members crafting the platform will use the 2012 version as a template and layer on many of the Republican National Committee’s policy resolutions adopted in recent months, from rejecting transgender bathroom use to imposing sanctions on Iran.

The key issues:

Same-sex marriage: Since 2012, the Supreme Court has ruled that states can’t prohibit same-sex couples from marrying. Yet the GOP platform includes harsh language condemning such unions. Bopp is advocating language that continues to call for embracing “traditional” marriage between one man and one woman but placing it in the historical context of the party’s position, when it opposed polygamy.

“The historical family unit has always been one man and one woman,” he said. “Men and women are different. They have complementary parenting styles, and having children raised with exposure to both is the best way, the ideal way to raise them.”

Republican LGBT advocates, on the other hand, are circulating language that doesn’t explicitly call for an embrace of same-sex marriage but acknowledges growing acceptance by Republicans of same-sex relationships. It also eliminates the word “traditional” and praises states and businesses that have implemented protections against discrimination for the LGBT community.

The effort to moderate this language has been supported by a multimillion-dollar fundraising effort, and though even some advocates expect it to fail, their goal is to make inroads to demonstrate the party’s shifting attitude.

Trade: In 2012, the GOP pledged to pursue the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. Trump has made tearing it up a hallmark of his campaign. In fact, his protectionist sentiments have cut sharply against the GOP platform’s call for an expansion of free trade agreements. Here, Trump may seek to inject his “America First” approach but is likely to face resistance from the party’s traditional economic advocates. GOP platform committee members note that here, too, there’s room for agreement: Trump has called for punishment of nations that violate trade pacts — and that’s something even free-traders in the GOP can agree on.

Abortion: The GOP platform opposing abortion includes no exceptions for rape, incest or to protect the life of the mother. Trump, like Romney before him, came to his anti-abortion position later in life but continues to endorse those exceptions. Like Romney, Trump may decide to accept the conservative version of this language, despite personal differences. The language calls for a constitutional amendment protecting “unborn children,” but backers note that this language doesn’t preclude exceptions, which are favored by most Americans.

Mexico: The 2012 GOP platform salutes Mexico as an ally in combating drug trafficking and laments that the Mexican people “are bearing the brunt” of drug cartels. Trump has suggested the country encourages sending drugs into the United States and has treated America’s southern neighbor as an adversary more than a friend. Here again, Bopp sees room for movement in Trump’s direction. Circumstances with Mexico have changed, he says.

“Mexico is being much more aggressive in trying to get their citizens to emigrate to the United States and to violate our borders and come here illegally,” he said.

THE COMMITTEE ON PERMANENT ORGANIZATION

This third committee gets less attention than the other two, but it’s the convention X-factor. The 112-delegate Committee on Permanent Organization meets this week, helmed by former RNC chairman and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, to recommend the leaders who will run the convention. Paul Ryan is expected to be the chairman, though he’s expressed increasing discomfort with Trump’s racially charged language and use of anti-Semitic imagery — and is someone whom Trump has repeatedly criticized for being insufficiently supportive. This committee will also select the convention’s parliamentarian, a person who will hold great sway over the proceedings should anti-Trump delegates mount a procedural effort to stymie him.

Workers prepare Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland for the Republican National Convention. | AP Photo

Why it matters: The Rules and Platform Committee reports must be adopted by the full convention in order to take effect. And delegates on the convention floor can amend or reject any portion of the reports if a majority of them differ. That’s why the officials in charge of any disputes are so powerful. And because the convention floor is governed by the rules of the U.S. House of Representatives, the current speaker would have an edge over delegates unfamiliar with the nuances.

In 2012, then-House Speaker John Boehner presided over the convention and gaveled through — over loud and intense objections by Ron Paul supporters — a series of rule changes designed to keep Paul from giving a nominating speech at Romney’s convention. Though enough delegates can force a roll call vote on controversial issues, Boehner ignored their calls and rammed through the pro-Romney rules without debate. Ryan hasn’t signaled whether he’d operate with a similarly heavy gavel, but depending on his approach, he can quickly curb any attempts to undercut Trump’s nomination.