Over the weekend, an e-mail went out to the New Hampshire delegation to the Republican National Convention. In it, the state’s GOP director said a vote for leaders and committee positions will take place via e-mail. Attached was a slate of delegates to be appointed – none of them were Trump supporters. More from New Hampshire Public Radio:

Trump got 35 percent of the vote on February 9. John Kasich got 15 percent. After that, it was a clump, with Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio all between 12 and 10 percent.  And under New Hampshire’s rules, any candidate who gets to 10 percent gets delegates. So even though Trump won pretty big, he earned less than half of the state’s delegates — 11 of 23.  But given that, you’d expect Trump’s delegates to get some prominent assignments – and they may yet —  but that’s not what is being proposed.

It is an interesting development. What the NHPR piece also points out is that the NHGOP chair, Jennifer Horn, has a history with opposing Donald Trump. Specifically, she took great issue with Trump’s proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the country.

Is it a conspiracy? Who knows, but it seems likely. It’s not like I blame the NHGOP for realizing what the party is doing to itself. Perhaps they realize there is no party if Donald Trump wins. And, whether you like or dislike Trump, you may be worried about the precedent this sets.

But, this is the beauty of the process. Each state sets its own rules. A uniform system across all the states is what stop insurgent candidacies (which is what you may want to call Donald Trump’s campaign, but the only insurgency here is of the conservative movement – the party leadership is, as we know by now, warming up to Candidate For President Donald Trump). The brilliant businessman is supposed to know the rules so he can exploit them.

Instead what’s happening is that Ted Cruz is (at least in this case) out-Trumping Donald Trump. HE is exploiting the rules for his benefit, and there is nothing unethical about it. It’s why we have these processes. The NHGOP is likewise taking advantage of the system to create its rules. It is Donald Trump who has failed to make any in-roads with state parties, and he is suffering the consequences of his pride. He assumed everyone would be on board, and is realizing that the reality is anything but.