Critics say RNC was in tank for Mitt Romney

The Republican National Committee was supposed to play the part of umpire in the GOP presidential primary, but some Republicans are grumbling that the committee wasn’t just calling balls and strikes.

Critics, including supporters of Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich and even neutral Republicans, argue that the national party took steps that helped tilt the contest toward Mitt Romney — an allegation that the RNC rejects but is taking very seriously.

The list of specific grievances ranges from issues that even the party acknowledges are legitimate, to those that they dismiss as desperate fixations from Romney’s flailing rivals.

For example, the committee agrees that some states that went for Romney jumped the line in the primary schedule, a violation of party rules. But RNC defenders shrug off other complaints, like that they undercut Santorum and Gingrich by formatting a delegate tracking list to pad Romney’s tally, by forming a fundraising alliance this week with Romney and by highlighting a rule that would block an unlikely path to the nomination for Gingrich.

And it’s possible they’ll be other clashes in the coming weeks, with the RNC signaling Thursday its opposition to a push by Santorum backers in Texas to alter the rules surrounding that state’s May 29 primary to help the former Pennsylvania Senator.

Read More at Politico. By Kenneth P. Vogel.

Photo Credit : Gage Skidmore (Creative Commons)