Tennessee Cruz Delegate Joe Carr: ‘No Question the Establishment Is Going to Try Some Shenanigans’

Former Tennessee State Rep. Joe Carr, a Cruz delegate, tells Breitbart News executive chairman Stephen K. Bannon “there’s no question the establishment is going to try some shenanigans” at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this July.

“You’ve seen every trick in the book,” Bannon told Carr, who narrowly lost the 2014 Republican U.S. Senate primary in Tennessee to incumbent Sen. Lamar Alexander, on Breitbart News Daily Monday morning on the Sirus XM’s Patriot Channel 125.

“You know how the establishment plays hard ball. You saw it in your [2014] primary [against Sen. Lamar Alexander]. You’re a Cruz delegate. What do you anticipate will be the games they’re going to try and play on you guys at the convention?” Bannon asked.

“Back in the summer of last year, I had an inkling that, because of our race back [in] 2014 against Lamar Alexander for U.S. Senate, that an outsider was going to bubble to the surface. I didn’t know if it was going to be Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, but we knew an outsider was going to play a signficant role in the nominating process,” Carr told Bannon.

“I have believed for eight, ten months now that we’re going to go to a contested convention, which is different, as your listeners know, from a brokered convention,” Carr said.

“When we had our primary convention election for delegates on March 1, I immediately went about reaching out to some of the Cruz delegates, because I am a Cruz delegate to the bitter end, to say, ‘Listen, whatever we’ve got to do, we need to hold together for the anti-establishment candidate in Ted Cruz, and here’s why.'” Carr continued:

In 2012, the Rules Committee of the RNC changed the rules at the convention to keep Ron Paul off the stage. They changed the rules. They changed the number of states you needed to nominate someone from five to eight. They implemented what’s called Rule 40. Your listeners are probably familiar with Rule 40.

“What we can expect is–in Tennessee anyways,” Carr added, “that of the 58 delegates, there are 14 delegates that will be appointed by the Chairman and the State Executive Committee. Typically, those delegates will be establishment delegates,” Carr said.

There is plenty of potential for establishment mischief around the rules, Carr noted.

“State law in Tennessee says you have to vote the first two ballots for either Cruz or Trump or Rubio, who only got a handful of delegates [9], but nonetheless, the RNC rules can change that. Then Tennessee law is subject to the RNC rules change,” Carr told Bannon.

“There’s no question the establishment is going to try some shenanigans about the rules, the platform, and the [credentials] setting committee,” Carr added.

For Carr and other like minded Cruz and Trump delegates, it’s all about understanding the rules so as not to be bamboozled by the establishment’s manipulation of them.

“We have to understand the rules mechanism process, the rules change process. Where grassroots conservatives always kind of fall down, we’re vocal, we’re loud, we got the majority, but we don’t understand the rules,” Carr said.

Having politically experienced people among the elected Cruz and Trump delegates is key, Carr added:

Serving in the Tennessee General Assembly along with Senator Mae Beavers, and being at the convention in 2012, I went to school on what the rules process means and how we effect that. What we’ve got to do is… it’s unlikely we’re going to have somebody from the Cruz and Trump camp sitting on the Rules Committee from Tennessee. I will just be honest with you. Because our RNC Chairman here in Tennessee is not going to allow that to happen.

But, everything that the Rules Committee adopts has to come to the floor for a vote.

What we’ve got to do is we’ve got to stop voice votes by the chair of the convention. We’ve got to tell Tennesseans, people from Alabama, from Texas, and all the other states, and say, look, if you don’t want the rules to change in the middle of the middle of the game, whatever those rules are, then we’ve got to stand together and make sure that the rules that were in place when the primaries started are in place when we go to the convention.

You can hear the full interview of Carr and Tennessee State Senator Mae Beavers, a Trump delegate, who, together with Cruz delegate Steve Gill are gathering Tennessee’s Trump and Cruz delegates to develop a convention strategy, here:

Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot Channel 125 weekdays from 6:00AM to 9:00AM EST.