Establishment Republicans who do not want either Ted Cruz or Donald Trump to win the GOP presidential nomination will change the convention rules at the last minute to make sure that doesn't happen, former Texas Rep. Ron Paul said Thursday.
"Rules were made to be broken," the 2012 presidential candidate told Fox News'
"America's Newsroom" program. "They are just more in a box because there has been more exposure.
"I suspect that that group that does not want Cruz and they are not too happy with Trump, they are going to work to change the rules. They will. At the last minute there will be something. They are obviously in a real mess."
In 2012, when Paul last sought office, the convention rules were changed to require that a candidate win at least eight states, blocking him from the nomination and allowing Mitt Romney to move forward, and Paul still thinks the system is "rigged."
"If there is a straw vote in a state and the delegates don't go exactly the same way as the straw vote, they say it's rigged," Paul told show host Bill Hemmer. "I got the large majority. I did very well in Iowa. According to the rules, I won it."
However, the lifelong Libertarian said he thinks they system is rigged "because the candidates who have generally won our elections have always been establishment candidate. Republicans and Democrats."
It's a bit different this time, said Paul, because Trump is saying that because he got the majority vote, he didn't get the delegates.
"That's like arguing [Al] Gore ought to be president because he had more votes than Bush. He's arguing that, said Paul.
But in many ways, the system is rigged "because they change the rules. The rules should be out there. The rules were beneficial actually to a candidate like myself who had less money, and less name recognition.
"But it gave us a chance. But they changed the rules because they didn't like what the people were saying."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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