Ted Cruz has given up on running as the Republican Party’s presidential nominee, but he hasn’t given up on running the Republican Party.

When Cruz heads to the Republican National Convention this summer, he’ll bring a list of ideas for changing the way the party governs itself and picks its presidential nominee. He’ll also bring plenty of backup: hundreds of delegates who were handpicked by the Cruz campaign. The delegates were assembled as part of Cruz’s now aborted bid to capture the GOP nomination in Cleveland, but now they’ll be key allies on the rules committees and other panels that will set the party’s ground rules for the next four years.


Cruz is eyeing another presidential run in 2020, but it’s about more than that. Along with setting the rules of the GOP primary, the party will also hash out its official policy platform — and even determine how much power the Republican National Committee has to make new rules of its own.

But Cruz isn’t the only one coming to the convention with an eye to the future. Donald Trump and his allies, fresh off a stunning primary run, have their own ideas about what’s next for the party. As do the parts of the party responsible for the 2013 GOP autopsy, which called for the party to consider immigration reform and take a more inclusive tone in its interaction with women, Latinos and other minorities.

They’re all coming to Cleveland, ready to rehash old fights and pick new ones — all against the backdrop of a party that has been turned on its head by the most unlikely of nominees. Here are the marquee battles.

Closed primaries: This is the tailor-made cause for Cruz: prohibiting Democrats and independents from participating in the Republican presidential nominating contest. It would instantly jolt the presidential nominating process to the right, a dynamic that would boost a conservative insurgent like Cruz.

Many state parties have permitted crossover voting because they argue it grows their base of support and attracts new members to the Republican cause, but Cruz will have hundreds of new supporters occupying the convention arena — and they’re poised to sway the rules argument in a more conservative direction.

Critics of open primaries say they give meddling opponents the opportunity to sway close races and shift the balance of power away from Republicans’ conservative base and toward — as Cruz would say — the “mushy middle.”

Look for proposals that would incentivize states to move away from open primaries, but also stiffer plans that would penalize those states that refuse. The more forceful the proposal, the more Cruz would benefit in a campaign rematch. The fight pits two enduring GOP principles against each other: the right to have Republicans pick the Republican presidential nominee and the autonomy of states to make their own choices.

The conscience clause: Delegates have, in recent election years, bound themselves to the results of presidential primaries and caucuses when choosing their nominee. However, conservative delegates are kicking around a proposal they say would release them from any obligations if the presumptive nominee holds views that dramatically contradict their own beliefs. This would be, in part, a not-so-subtle swipe at Trump, whose amorphous views on abortion have rankled the right. But it’s also part of a broader attempt to return more autonomy to delegates who have ceded it to GOP voters in recent cycles.

On the surface, this is another change that would benefit Cruz — especially if delegates were to make a Hail Mary attempt to unseat Trump at this convention — but it could also open the door to innumerable loopholes for delegates to back out of supporting a presumptive nominee.

Rewriting the calendar: Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina lead off the vetting of presidential contenders, and, since 2008, Nevada has been the first-in-the-West contest. But after this season, that calendar is getting a second look, and early states face attacks from later-voting ones that are sick of being forced into bystander status.

Utah’s Enid Mickelsen and Texas GOP chairman Tom Mechler have lined up behind a proposal that would establish an early-state rotation — one from each region — to ensure every state gets an occasional chance to host the early contests that winnow the GOP field. She’s likely to find allies among the 46 states that get shunted to the sidelines when the early states garner gobs of attention (and millions of advertising dollars) from candidates and PACs. It’s a cottage industry and economic boon for a select few states at the expense of the others, and that’s made the early states a target.

But there may be simpler proposals as well. Oklahoma GOP chairwoman Pam Pollard says she’d like to simply buttress early states like New Hampshire and South Carolina — which permit crossover voting from non-Republicans — with a larger number of states that allow only registered Republicans to vote. The goal would be to dilute the influence on non-Republicans in the most important part of the GOP primary: the field-thinning early votes that drive the rest of the primary process. Here, Cruz would benefit again: If more conservative electorates help winnow the field, it’d be harder for an amorphous candidate like Trump to build a big lead.

A slew of RNC members have signaled that no matter what happens with the other early states, Nevada is likely to get booted from the exclusive club. It’s overseen three rocky caucuses since 2008 and each time raised questions about the integrity of the vote and the competence of its procedures. Arizona and Colorado will be on the short list of replacements.





Killing Rule 40B: This controversial rule prohibits presidential candidates from placing themselves into nomination unless they obtain signed petitions from the majority of delegates in eight states. It used to be five — but Mitt Romney’s forces jacked up the threshold to block Ron Paul from sharing the stage in 2012. The rule became controversial in 2016 when it appeared likelier that the GOP primary was heading for a contested convention among Trump, Cruz and John Kasich. Trump was the only one poised to earn enough support to compete.

Though RNC officials later clarified that the rule itself was mostly toothless — even candidates who fail to meet the threshold would be eligible to receive votes from delegates — it’s still been marked for weakening, if not outright elimination. Its primary function is to block candidates from delivering brief nomination speeches on the same stage as the GOP front-runner — and when networks carry only one hour of prime-time convention TV per night, every minute is precious.

This rule is also a target of Cruz’s forces, who note that its genesis was Romney’s establishment-backed campaign and that its intent was to silence a libertarian minority. The rule alienated a core segment of the base — one that Cruz has courted aggressively throughout the campaign. Placating Paul-ites with a rule change would help Cruz keep up his goodwill among libertarian activists he’d need next time.

Revoking the RNC’s rulemaking authority: It was considered a striking break from history when, in 2012, the Convention Rules Committee adopted a rule that permitted the RNC to revise crucial rules between conventions. Typically, once the convention rules were set, they were locked in for four years. Relinquishing even a sliver of control was a sore point for many of the veteran Republican insiders who argued it was a Pandora’s box that could lead to politically motivated changes to the presidential nomination process.

Proponents of that interim authority argued that the RNC needed the ability to be nimble and flexible in complicated times. In addition, they imposed strict limits on when rules could be amended — none, for example, would be permitted after Sept. 1, 2014, to avoid political decisions — and they required a three-fourths vote of RNC members to ratify any rule change.

The RNC used its authority to revamp the debate process and the primary calendar ahead of the hectic presidential season. But delegates may be wary of extending that authority again. Ceding limited control to the RNC in 2012 gave the RNC leadership more control over the nominating process than ever. And after a season in which Trump assailed the RNC as a pillar of the establishment, there may be less of an appetite to award it the same authority.

Killing delegate binding: Curly Haugland, a notoriously maverick RNC committeeman from North Dakota, has argued for years that the current GOP rules don’t force delegates to vote according to the results of primaries and caucus. A rule added in 2008 that includes binding language, he argues, actually has no power over the convention because it was adopted improperly and conflicts with other existing rules.

But RNC lawyers have dismissed his interpretation. And most candidates — including nearly every member of the Republican establishment — have treated convention delegates as bound for years. Haugland has found few friends in his cause. But he’s now planning to treat 2016 as a last stand on this issue, and part of that offensive will be to propose eliminating the binding language and forcing fellow delegates to reckon with his ideas. Though it may be a long-shot effort, the debate could be an eye-opening look under the hood of long-ignored, ancient GOP processes.

Haugland plans to pair this effort with a proposal to eliminate the GOP convention altogether. His argument: If delegates are to simply cast pro forma votes based on the results of primaries and caucuses, why convene an expensive and largely meaningless gathering at all?

