Tonight, Texas delegates loyal to Ron Paul are planning to loudly protest the compromise reached on delegate rules. Breitbart News sources on the convention floor say vast swaths of the Texas delegation are going to stand up and chant in unison, “No! Heck, no! Don’t change the rules!”
The Republican National Committee has been trying to amend the rules so presidential candidates could choose their own bound delegates. In the past, states would decide how to allot delegates through primaries, then pick the delegates at state conventions. The new rules would give the power to the presidential nominee. Republican National Committeeman James Bopp had been leading the fight against a rules change, but he said he had reached a compromise with the RNC, saying:
The leadership of the Republican National Committee and the Romney for President campaign has heard the concerns of the conservative grassroots voices in our party and has crafted an amendment to the Rules adopted on Friday to address these concerns. At the same time, the revised language closes a loophole in our party rules, which previously failed to include a penalty for delegates who break their promise to vote for a particular Presidential candidate as required by state law or state party rules.
The reason that the RNC wanted to change the rules was that there was concern that Ron Paul supporters would break party rules and vote for Paul instead of Romney. The rule was to prevent such a scenario from happening in the future.