Lundstrum, Hamilton Show Their Mettle

ARKANSANS SHOW A NATIONAL POLITICAL CONVENTION STILL MEANS SOMETHING

When Tom Lundstrum Jr. and Reta Hamilton say the Republican Party went too far, the party went too far.

These are not people who cause problems for their party lightly. These are not people who cause problems for their party at all until the party insists on doing something wrong and wants them to go along with it.

Before I go any further: Tom and his wife, Robin, are good friends of mine. This is so even though they’re awfully Republican. They are, however, Republicans who can take a joke. Being friends with me proves that.

Robin was trying to come up with a new fundraising idea one day. I suggested a sock hop. After all, I said with my best deadpan, their party wants to drag the whole country back into the 1950s. We’re still friends.

I would never tell that joke to Reta Hamilton.

She’s been a national GOP committeewoman for Arkansas for as long as I’ve known her. She’s not as well known outside Republican circles as she should be.

She was a stalwart of the state party when being a Republican in Arkansas required living with neither hope nor fear. When party finances collapsed not so long ago, the person picked for the interim chairman - the person to start restoring faith in the party and its integrity - was Reta Hamilton.

By the way, “chairman” was the right term. I called Hamilton up while reporting on the party finance crisis and called her “chairwoman.” I was fi rmly informed that the correct title was “chairman.” That should give you some idea of how conservative she is.

Tom made his reputation in his years on the Washington County Election Commission. The big test came in the 2002 race for the state Senate seat from Fayetteville between Bootsie Ackerman and Sue Madison. The result turned on a handful of votes.

Throughout the recounts, Lundstrum never budged from his determination to get an accurate tally of every valid vote.

Robin, by the way, is chairwoman - chairperson, chairman, whatever - of the annual Washington County Lincoln Day Dinner. That’s the must-go Republican fundraiser in this state. I could brag by giving the reasons why, but you get the drift: These are not people you look toward when you’re seeking dissent.

Tom Lundstrum and Hamilton are members ofthe Republican National Convention’s rules committee. They opposed a rules change for the 2016 nominating process. The Mitt Romney campaign got a majority of the committee to approve giving candidates veto power over national delegates.

Put plainly, the change would have allowed the guy who had enough delegates to win the nomination to replace delegates who weren’t going to vote for him. All pretense of the rank and file having a say would be lost.

Now the Romney crew wants you to believe theonly people opposed to this were die-hard Ron Paul supporters. Lundstrum and Hamilton give lie to that.

To them, the issue here was supremely simple: The party nominates the candidate, not the other way around.

Lundstrum also correctly warned that a state’s delegate positions could, in effect, be auctioned off for campaign contributions under this proposal.

“The way I interpret that is a presidential candidate may at any time disavow any duly elected delegate.

That is intolerable to us,” Lundstrum said of the proposed rule change.

This is how a major party wanted to pick its candidate for the chief executive of the greatest democracy in the world.

Opponents got ready to fight the rule change on the convention fl oor. Romney’s team - recognizing they’d lit the fuse to the very keg of controversy they were hoping to stifl e - off ered a compromise. The deal requires delegates to vote for the candidate they had pledged to vote for anyway.

That was a face-saver. Now the winning candidate will have to say, “Hey, it would have been unanimous, but some of the candidateshave to honor the pledge.” That still wasn’t enough for Hamilton, but things settled down.

Thank you, Lundstrum and Hamilton. I doubt either of you are happy that I’ve made a column out of your party’s attempt to do wrong. It’s just nice to know there are still some folks in a major party who believe that the whole thing’s more than a show that should be handed over to the stage crew and the big donors who pay them.

DOUG THOMPSON IS A POLITICAL REPORTER AND COLUMNIST FOR NWA MEDIA.

Opinion, Pages 14 on 09/02/2012

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