Ken Cuccinelli attended a meeting between RNC officials and Never Trump Republicans. | AP Photo Republican unity negotiations break down The RNC spent most of the day behind closed doors with anti-Trump insurgents. It yielded nothing.

CLEVELAND — Secret negotiations between the Republican National Committee and conservative leaders seeking to overhaul the party’s presidential nominating process broke down Thursday afternoon, with each side blaming the other for walking away from talks.

Ken Cuccinelli, a conservative leader who played a prominent role in the discussions, said the two sides came extremely close to hammering out a broad agreement that would have reformed the party primary process and avoided fractious debates on divisive rules proposals that had been offered by conservative delegates.


Cuccinelli said he had secured agreements to change the terms of RNC members so they don’t end in the middle of presidential election years and to adjust the role of GOP “superdelegates” – the convention delegates who are free to vote for any candidate of their choice. He added that he never broached the most explosive subject – a proposal to free delegates bound to support Donald Trump’s nomination – because the RNC made clear that squashing that effort was “their number one priority.”

But the talks fell apart over a proposal to incentivize states to close their Republican primaries to Democratic and independent voters. The proposal would have given bonus convention delegates to states that make the switch, but they couldn’t agree on the precise number of delegates to award, Cuccinelli said. He added that it was the RNC that walked away from talks.

But shortly after he spoke to reporters, the RNC's spokesman disputed Cuccinelli’s characterization. The spokesman said RNC leaders were arguing for a delicately crafted package of rules and simply could not budge any further.

Two RNC sources suggested the RNC rejected Cuccinelli’s final offer. One, a committeeman who requested anonymity, predicted the breakdown of talks would lead to “war” in the remaining rules fights.

The failure of the closed-door talks, which lasted at least eight hours, drove conservative delegates to push forward multiple proposals that the RNC had hoped would never see the light of day – including a controversial proposal to ban paid lobbyists from acting as RNC members and a slew of proposals intended to weaken the power of the Republican National Committee chairman.

But time and again, RNC and Trump delegates combined to kill efforts to weaken the RNC chairman’s power.

RNC members on the panel joined forces with allies of Donald Trump to crush all attempts to weaken the RNC leadership. Opponents of the RNC repeatedly failed to muster more than two-dozen votes -- a crucial threshold because opponents of Trump’s nomination need the support of 28 rules committee members to push their fight to the full convention next week.

“We rise and fall on our chairman,” said Ross Little, a Louisiana delegate who is also an RNC committeeman from Louisiana.

The fight grew most intense over a proposal to strip the RNC of authority to change the party’s rules between national conventions, a proposal that Virginia delegate Morton Blackwell called “the worst rule change ever inserted into our party rules.” Blackwell argued that giving the RNC rule-making power guts the authority of grassroots Republicans by concentrating too much power in the RNC chairman.

That’s because, he said, RNC committee members rarely vote against the chairman, who has the power to appoint them to lead powerful committees.

But allies of RNC Chairman Reince Priebus argued that the measure would prevent the RNC from being nimble in planning for future presidential elections.

“This is a safety valve for the people. This is a safety valve for the RNC,” said Nathan Paikai, a Hawaii delegate.

The bulk of the important debates Thursday occurred behind closed doors between Cuccinelli, RNC leaders and other prominent members of the convention Rules Committee – including Utah Sen. Mike Lee and Colorado’s Kendal Unruh, leader of the effort to stop Trump from claiming the GOP nomination.