A super PAC is trying to revive the Dump Trump movement, which first began when Ted Cruz and John Kasich were still in the race but died down after Donald Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee.
The movement, now also referred to as the “free the delegates” movement, is mainly being led and funded by the Courageous Conservatives PAC. The PAC was initially started to help the Cruz presidential campaign but it has since spread out to help endorse other conservative candidates for various offices.
Steve Lonegan, the spokesman of the Courageous Conservatives PAC told NBC News that the purpose of the free the delegates movement is to “provide you [delegates] support should you be threatened on the state level with some form of retribution.”
The PAC helped to organize a massive conference call this week that reached up to 1,000 men and women, some of which were Republican delegates.
The conference call discussed changing RNC rules to allow delegates to vote their conscience instead of being bound to a candidate by their state, while urging those on the call to “get the word out,” said NBC News. That would effectively overturn the will of the millions of Republican voters who voted during the primary.
In order to change the rules of the RNC in which delegates are currently bound to their state’s candidate, NBC News reports that the proposal to unbind delegates must first gain 57 votes in favor of the change out of the 112 members on the Rules Committee. It must then obtain a majority of the 2,400 delegates’ votes to officially change the way in which delegates act.
Kendal Unruh, one of the members on the Rules Committee told reporters that getting the proposal through the Rules Committee would be tough, however she is confident that once passed, there will be no problem getting the votes from the delegates.
The Courageous Conservatives PAC is small, having received only $359,108, $157,000 of which has come from loans, and $181,691 has come from individual donors according to the Federal Election Commission. While the PAC is smaller than many other super PACs, it fully intends to attend the RNC fully staffed with an established “command center,” the purpose of which will be to whip votes for the rule change and further strategize on the convention floor.
The PAC is also committed to helping a conservative Republican obtain the Republican nomination in order to protect not only party unity and party goals, but to protect Republican House and Senate seats further downstream.
The Courageous Conservatives PAC will continue to fund efforts to unbind delegates and promote conservatism throughout the convention through its website, social media, and radio and TV ads as it has done in the past.
While there have been mistakes made in the Free the Delegates movement Unruh says the movement and the PAC will be “hitting our peak right at convention time.”
