The mainstream anti-Trump publication Politico has conceded that the Colorado-based #NeverTrump rebels have no chance of affecting the result at the Republican convention in Cleveland.

Breitbart News reported Friday on the sad shape of the “Free the Delegates” movement that put Colorado schoolteacher Kendal Unruh in short-lived alliance with Bill Kristol and Cory Booker’s one-time New Jersey Senate opponent. But the Rules of the Republican Party shut down the rebels’ floor plan, making it essentially impossible to pull off their floor scheme.

Politico is waving the white flag, citing a litany of political insiders. Politico reports in an article entitled “Why Trump won’t get dumped in Cleveland”:

There’s one insurmountable problem: most of the people who could actually stop Trump from taking control of the party — the 2,472 convention delegates — won’t even consider it… …These dynamics have left anti-Trump activists frustrated and stalled. Only a handful of convention delegates have publicly declared their intent to take on Trump in Cleveland. Dozens of others have told POLITICO they’ll forcefully reject efforts to thwart Trump’s nomination. Their main reason: he won more votes than any of his rivals – more than 13 million – and played by the rules to do it.

The rebels planned to challenge and interrupt the votes of the state delegations during the roll call. They claimed that Rule 38 of the Rules of the Republican Party prohibits “unit” voting by states. They thought if they challenged each state vote, then convention chairman Paul Ryan would have to count the votes of all of the delegates individually. In that phase, the rebels thought that they could “conscience vote” to peel off 306 of Trump’s pledged delegates.

But state rules and state laws already bind Trump’s pledged delegates to him. So even if the rebels did interrupt the roll call to force an individual vote, they would still have to vote in accordance with their state primary results. If they defy state rules, then their votes get thrown out under Rule 16.

A longtime Republican convention-goer and former Senate counsel suspects that their challenge-and-interrupt plan won’t get past the C states – like “Connecticut” – before somebody capably shuts it down.