Old Tammany Hall = New GOP

Boss Tweed would approve.

[GOP attorney Ben] Ginsberg explained that 73 percent of the delegates at the GOP convention “are chosen at state conventions or by state party executive committees with little or no input from the candidate who wins that state.” Those delegates are bound, on the convention’s first ballot, to vote for the presidential candidate chosen by their state’s voters. But they’re not bound to do so on subsequent ballots. And even on the first ballot, they’re not bound to vote in the candidate’s interest on rules issues, credentials challenges, or other questions that can loom large in the arcane proceedings of the convention. [Therefore] Ginsberg said, “you would have to do a lot of state-by-state organizing, win the delegates at the convention.”

Byron York reports more on the Ginsberg interview. Even Brian Williams was aghast.