In the eyes of Democrats who held a sit-in at the House of Representatives this week, the prospect of competing against Donald Trump in November’s presidential election has induced a giddy mood.



Here, perhaps, is a figure who could finally allow them progress on a host of intractable issues: not just the gun control they called for during their historic 26-hour floor protest, but perhaps immigration reform, family leave legislation and student debt relief. Even bold steps to combat climate change could now be up for grabs.

These are, of course, mostly issues that Trump fiercely opposes and would block in a heartbeat if elected to the White House. But the reason for the burst of 1960s-style optimism is the belief among many in Washington that this presumptive nominee of the Republican party has become so divisive, so deeply unpopular to all but angriest of his party’s white male base and so inept at organising a professional campaign that he could sink the Grand Old Party in an epic landslide – losing it not just the White House, but the Senate and perhaps even the heavily gerrymandered House of Representatives too.



Like many 60s dreams, there is a narcotic whiff to this fantasy. Trump’s unfavourability ratings may have hit a new high this month, and he is down sharply in the polls against Hillary Clinton since an intemperate response to the Orlando massacre and a seemingly racist tirade against the judiciary, but he has proven all year to have had a closer feel for the mood of the unpredictable 2016 electorate than any establishment candidate.



More importantly, just when the wheels look most likely to come off the Trump bandwagon, he has a habit of wrenching the steering wheel back from the edge of the ditch. Republicans in Washington were relieved this week, for example, when he sacked his fiery campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, on Monday; responded aggressively to some embarrassingly weak fundraising figures on Tuesday; and delivered an attack speech against Clinton on Wednesday that for once seemed to hurt her more than him.

“Three days does not make up for three weeks, but we are starting to see a more professional campaign,” says Tom Cole, the deputy majority whip in the House and a reliable weather vane for the mood of a Republican party leadership that often seems despairing of the man at the top of its election ticket.

With just under 20 weeks to go in the 2016 marathon, congressional Republicans are under no illusions about how tough November will be for them. Staying within touching distance of Clinton in an electoral college system that flatters her advantages will be tough.

The seats up for grabs in the Senate this year mostly favour Democrats too. The Clinton campaign has started keeping a running tally of Republicans who may even vote for her, including, most recently, Brent Scowcroft, a former national security adviser to George HW Bush and Gerald Ford.

“This is clearly an election where it is going to be more about defence than offence,” Cole told the Guardian. “We have got our first team playing on an away field.”

But for Republicans eyeing what many believed to be a naive guns stunt by Democrats in the House this week, there is confidence that Democratic hopes of taking control of the floor for real remain implausible. Only around 25 House seats are seen as truly vulnerable, not enough to swing control, let alone cause the existential rout some Democrats hope for.

“This party has been around for 160 years and I don’t think it’s going to suddenly disappear, even if it could have a very different character after Trump,” adds David Bernstein, law professor and leading conservative critic of the celebrity billionaire. “He’s run roughshod over most of the principles and constituents that make up the Republican party.”

It has not stopped some in the GOP of dreaming too, however – mostly of one last attempt to “dump Trump” at their convention in Cleveland.

However, whilst a handful of diehard Never Trump Republicans have raised their hopes of a last-ditch effort , their path to keeping Trump from the nomination seems increasingly unlikely.

Although Trump has alienated many in his party with his controversial demagogic comments, stoking the latest push against him with racially charged comments about a federal judge and American Muslims, Republicans don’t see any viable alternative to the real estate mogul.

The ‘conscience clause’

The main effort to stop Trump at the convention is focused around a so-called “conscience clause” which would allow delegates bound to Trump to vote for an alternative for reasons of conscience.

The goal is that enough delegates would oppose Trump for these reasons to deny him the 1,237 needed to formally clinched the nomination. Since most delegates are only bound on the first ballot, it would lead to an open convention and, out of the chaos, a more viable candidate than Trump would emerge and become the nominee.

The challenge for Trump opponents is this would involve navigating a complicated process littered with roadblocks and procedural obstacles. The first step would be to get at least 25%, but ideally a majority, of the rules committee to endorse a conscience clause.

The rules committee has 112 members, two each from 50 states and six territories. It sets the rules of the convention, subject to the approval of the entire body. With a majority of the rules committee, a conscience clause would become part of the rules of the Republican party, subject to approval on the convention floor. However, with only 25% of the rules committee, a minority report could be submitted to the convention and receive a mandatory floor vote.

A minority report is the most likely path for Trump opponents to force any sort of floor vote. Delegate counters that the Guardian talked to were skeptical about this possibility; one source familiar with Trump efforts said that between pro-Trump members of the rules committee and those aligned with the Republican National Committee chair, Reince Priebus, it was almost mathematically impossible to get the 28 dissenters needed. So far, only three members have publicly endorsed a conscience clause: Kendal Unruh and Guy Short of Colorado, who are both vehement Trump opponents, and Curly Haugland of North Dakota, who has long been a vocal proponent of procedural reform of the RNC.

Even if the opponents of Trump do get the support of the necessary rules committee members, that doesn’t mean a floor vote is automatic. Instead, RNC rules require that within an hour of the rules committee vote that a minority report be submitted in writing to the chairman, vice-chairman, or secretary of the committee or secretary of the convention, along with the signatures of every committee member seeking a minority report. If there aren’t enough signatures or none of the four officials to whom a minority report may be submitted can be found within the hour, the report does not get voted on.

If somehow Trump opponents make it past this hurdle, they then need a majority of the delegates to approve a conscience clause in a floor vote. If that’s achieved, Trump becomes the nominee on the first ballot unless enough delegates use that conscience clause to torpedo candidacy. After all, a conscience clause applies to all bound delegates, including those bound to Ted Cruz or John Kasich.

So far, the campaign to woo rules committee members to support a conscience clause has been remarkably ham-handed. Led by Unruh as well as Steve Lonegan, an archconservative perennial candidate from New Jersey, it has failed to attract any heavyweight figures in the party.

The group is running radio ads in Iowa in an attempt to persuade Steve Scheffler, an RNC committeeman from the Hawkeye State and a rules committee member, to back the conscience clause. In an interview with the Guardian, Scheffler rejected the campaign against him as the work of a handful of malcontents who are “destructive and nasty people”. In his opinion, “the voters have spoken in 50 states and six territories” and “bullying and intimidation won’t work”.

The longtime Republican activist saw the effort as “a waste of time, energy and money”. Scheffler added that “the overwhelming number of grassroots Republicans agree with my position”.

He saw only two choices remaining who would be elected president in November: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. And, in Scheffler’s opinion, “Hillary makes Richard Nixon look like Sunday school picnic”.

In contrast to the slapdash effort by those opposed to Trump, the presumptive nominee’s campaign is now putting together a sophisticated whip operation and has a number of key advantages built in, including that only they have the full list of rules committee members, which is not yet public.

Trump can be still thwarted at the convention but, as sources pointed out to the Guardian, it won’t be by those organizing against him. Instead, only Trump can defeat himself.