"The chair has found insufficient support for the request for a record vote," Womack said, ruling out the possibility of a roll call.
Republican factions trying to stop Donald Trump's presidential nomination noisily disrupted a vote on convention rules, putting on full display the the fissures in the party on the first day of its national gathering.
Delegates from Colorado were seen walking out of the convention hall, and former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli was spotted angrily throwing his convention credentials to the floor after an effort to seek a roll-call vote on convention rules was cut short.
The disruption came as Trump and party officials were opening up what is supposed to be a rallying point for Republicans leading into the general election. The featured event for the convention's opening day was set to be the presumptive nominee's appearance in the hall Monday night to introduce his wife, Melania.
Former Senator Gordon Humphrey said he filed requisite signatures from nine delegations to force a roll-call vote on rules. Humphrey, a New Hampshire delegate, said he wasn't confident that RNC staff had the "courage" or "independence" to "stand up" to pressure from the Trump organization to disallow or ignore petitions.
Anti-Trump delegates were seeking new rules that would give them the ability to vote for someone other than Trump. While it was unlikely that the effort would ultimately succeed, since Trump has won far more delegates than he needs for the nomination, the roll call vote would have given anti-Trump delegates more opportunity to voice their disapproval.
Representative Steve Womack, an Arkansas Republican who was chairing the proceedings, said that nine states had originally requested a roll-call vote, but that three later withdrew. Seven would be necessary to force the roll-call vote.
"The chair has found insufficient support for the request for a record vote," Womack said, ruling out the possibility of a roll call.
That drew angry chants from both anti-Trump forces and the presumptive nominee's supporters on the floor.
Humphrey, who opposes Trump's nomination, called the presumptive nominee's supporters "brown shirts" during an interview with MSNBC.
"They act like fascists," Humphrey, who represented New Hampshire for two terms in the U.S. Senate, said.
Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, said he could not fathom the decision by the convention organizers in an interview with CNN.
“If what they want is unity, treat us respectfully as delegates," Lee said. He called the incident "surreal."
"They rolled through. They cheated. That's what you just saw -- them violate their own rules," Cuccinelli told MSNBC.
Delegates opposed to Trump tried to change party rules last week to block his nomination by allowing delegates to vote their consciences regardless of how their state voted earlier this year in primaries and caucuses.
Trump argued that millions of Republicans have spoken in the primary elections and caucuses earlier this year and selected him to be their standard-bearer in a race against presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in November.
The billionaire was scheduled to accept the nomination in a formal speech on Thursday.
Poster Comment:
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Bill Kristol and Paul Ryan just shit their slimy pants.