US election: Anti-Trump rebellion quashed in vote

The movement to stop Donald Trump from gaining the Republican presidential nomination prior to the party's convention has been crushed by a vote.

The party's rules committee rejected a proposal that would have allowed delegates to back the candidate of their choice.

The panel approved a rule that would "bound" delegates to candidates decided by state primaries and caucuses.

Trump supporters say the movement to stop the candidate is now finished.

The Republican National Convention will take place in Cleveland, Ohio next week and Mr Trump, a billionaire businessman with no prior political experience, is expected to be officially nominated.

The New Yorker stunned all predictions by winning the primary contests.

But he has been criticised by many in his own party for his strident tone and extreme positions on immigration and national security.

In the end a handful of angry delegates at the Republican National Convention rules committee meeting couldn't undo the will of more than 14 million Republican voters who chose Donald Trump as their party nominee.

The last gasp of the #NeverTrump movement came following a truncated debate and a voice vote against allowing Republican delegates to "follow their conscience". There were objections, of course, but the gavel cut them short.

Donald Trump may have run a chaotic, occasionally haphazard national presidential campaign over the past month, but his convention team, headed by Paul Manafort, was ruthlessly efficient on Thursday night.

It helped that they had the Republican leadership, including chair Reince Priebus, on their side.

While many in the higher echelons of the party may not be thrilled to have the brash New Yorker as their standard-bearer, they've clearly made the calculus that the damage from a fractured, fractious convention would be greater than whatever might happen with Mr Trump leading the way for the next four months.

We'll see if they're right.

This vote now appears to dispel any notion of stopping Mr Trump from being the nominee.

"It was never real, it was always overblown," said Ron Kaufman, a delegate from Massachusetts. "They were never there."

The delegate from Colorado who wrote the proposal, Kendal Unruh, vowed to get the 28 signatures needed to allow for a "floor fight" or a vote to allow delegates to back another candidate.

The prospect of that is unlikely, and she would need 2,472 delegates to defeat Mr Trump.

"It's just the start," Ms Unruh said after the vote. "There's no shock here, this was expected."

Many Republican delegates pushed back against Ms Unruh's efforts, saying the efforts would be ignoring the millions of people who voted for Mr Trump across the country.

The panel voted to create a commission that could propose changes to the party's nomination process, which Mr Trump has called "rigged".
 

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