Heading into tonight's speechifying, I was convinced that Ted Cruz would emerge afterwards as the heir apparent to the Republican nomination in 2020, should Donald Trump fail to win in November. Now, I'm not so sure.
But before we get to the big story of the night, let's start at the beginning. Today, the realization finally dawned in the Trump camp that they had to do something to stop the bleeding over the plagiarism storyline. A staffer was summarily dragged out who offered to fall on her own sword, and magnanimous Donald pardoned her, saying "everyone makes mistakes." So they likely successfully prevented the story from continuing for another day. But it would have been overshadowed anyway (obviously) by the end of the night.
But again, I'm getting ahead of myself. John Kasich also stirred the pot a bit today, saying he was courted for Trump's veep and that, furthermore, they offered him control over both the domestic and foreign agenda, leaving Trump to... um, play golf? The Trump camp immediately denied the story, which only served to highlight the Trump/Kasich feud even further than Kasich's refusal to set foot in the arena already had.
Tonight, the scheduling finally approached professionalism, I have to say (as an overall comment). There was a slow build throughout the night from all the speakers (and their placement), the minor folks in the first hour, the more prominent in the second hour, and (excepting Callista Gingrich's bizarre appearance), the third and primetime hour was nothing but the A-list -- with no minor-leaguers left hanging at the end of the night after the excitement was over and the crowd had gone home. So there was that, at the very least. To put this another way, tonight's train wreck did not resemble that of the previous two nights of scheduling idiocy -- it was for an entirely different reason.
Things got off to a lively start with Rick Scott, who immediately pulled the "Radical Islamic Terrorism" card out and plunked it down on the table. This would prove so popular that I was eventually just using "RIT!" as an abbreviation in my notes. Another snap abbreviation coinage was "LHU" for all the "Lock her up!" chanting throughout the night, I should mention (which started during Rick Scott's speech and continued from that point forward, intermittently).
Laura Ingraham took the stage next, and totally fired the crowd up. I guess the GOP doesn't hate all journalists, eh? She heaped up a big helping of (blonde-highlighted) red meat, and the crowd just ate it up. She even got in a "skinny jeans/man-bun" joke to show how hip (or "anti-hip" perhaps) she is. She was folksy, and even though her speech was fairly long, the crowd stayed with her the entire time. She did take one pointed shot across Ted Cruz's bow (without actually naming him), which he later ignored, but the most notable thing about her performance was the fact that she seemed to be immensely enjoying herself. This is notable because so few speakers have radiated this impression during the whole convention (the runner-up would probably be the ultimate fighting guy, who also looked like he was having a ball onstage).
Some snoozer of a businessman (a Trump business partner, no less) had the unenviable task of following this speech up, who was followed by a chirpy and perky female attorney general from Florida (who at one point reacted to the crowd's chanting with "Lock her up -- I love that!"). Is this the same woman who refused to prosecute Trump for fraud after he donated $25,000 to her campaign? At this point, I am too weary to fact-check this, so in the spirit of all that is Trump I'm just going to assert it and see where the chips land.
Hey, I've been sitting through three solid days of this, so you'll have to forgive me if I'm getting a bit loopy. We then got the first of many little "movie time" vignettes, which introduced a female astronaut -- historical, since today is "moonday," when Neil Armstrong did his thing (and muffed his big line) back in 1969. This to me was ironic in the extreme, seeing as how Republicans are always the ones slashing NASA's budget in Congress. I mean, all that space/pioneering/leadership stuff doesn't exactly come cheap, and wasn't it George W. Bush who killed the space shuttle program, after all? Like I said, ironic.
We next got Michelle Van Etten, who absolutely took the prize for unintended hilarity (at least from the Democrats watching) for telling her life story as an extended metaphor (she's a businesswoman) of putting on a circus as a kid (her first business venture), and not realizing how it would sound at the end when she said Donald Trump is the "one man who can be ringmaster" of the Washington circus. This is too easy a shot for me to take, so I leave this one for others to poke fun at. Trump? Circus? Ringmaster? Man, the jokes just write themselves....
We then got the Latino-outreach portion of the show, with a Kentucky state senator who is obviously seen as a rising star in his party (Barack Obama's big step into the spotlight was a speech at a national convention when he was just a state senator, I hasten to remind folks). He had an awesome delivery style and cadence, I had to admit -- a very good speaker after the mostly-unimpressive speakers who preceded him. At the end of his speech, we saw something rather unexpected -- a GOP crowd actually cheering someone for speaking Spanish to the crowd. This election cycle had Republican presidential candidates calling for "English-only on the campaign trail and debates," in case anyone's forgotten. But whatever -- Ralph Alvarado did an excellent job both stylistically and substantially, with a short-and-snappy list of why everyone should think Obama is a giant failure. Not exactly my cup of tea (personally), but it was well presented, I have to admit. Although there was one moment where he said the election is not over "left or right, but up or down" which did bring to mind that Simpsons Kang and Kodos bit ("Forwards, not backwards! Upwards not downwards! And always twirling, twirling for freedom!").
This brought us to the second hour. This began with a black minister who (not surprisingly) was one of the best at getting the crowd worked up of the entire night. Darrell Scott proved without a shadow of a doubt that Republicans are OK with an angry black guy, as long as he's a Republican angry black guy (fun fact: out of 2,400+ GOP delegates, a grand total of 18 are black). Snarkiness aside, the guy was very good at his trade -- his trade being provoking an emotional response from a crowd, of course. He ended spectacularly, with a riff on the Declaration of Independence that other speakers attempted throughout the night (but which he absolutely nailed).
We then got a oilman whom I mostly ignored, as I grilled myself a cheese sandwich, to bolster my flagging strength. His basic message was the old Palinesque "drill, baby, drill" to which he added something along the lines of "when an American oil, rig dies, the terrorists win" or something (my notes got kinda greasy at this point, for some reason). Then we got another mini-movie about how great Trump was.
Scott Walker then took the stage -- one in a long line of "failed challengers to Donald Trump" throughout the whole convention, in fact. Walker tried to be angry and rousing, which he had a limited degree of success doing, but you could still see why he was one of the first to drop out of the race. His "America! Deserves! Better!" wasn't anywhere near as good as Chris Christie's "guilty or not guilty" call-and-response, but the crowd still seemed to enjoy it. Walker enthusiastically endorsed Trump early on in his speech, but the most bizarre thing (to me) was hearing a GOP crowd actually cheer the phrase "Radical! Islamic! Terrorism!" -- which is almost Orwellian in terms of the optics (either seeing a GOP crowd appear to cheer on the concept of RIT, or, alternatively, a slice of a Big Brother "Two Minutes Hate" session).
Then it was movie time again, with another Trump employee praising his boss. Oh, sure, your boss is great and all, but what else are you going to say on national television? Sheesh. I missed some of the movie flipping channels, but it was followed by Lynn Patton, a black Trump employee (the same one from the video? my notes don't say...) who stunned me by actually sympathetically using the term "LGBTQ" not just once but twice during her speech -- something I never thought I'd see at a Republican convention. She also had the most emotional and human moment of the night at the end of her speech, when she choked up talking about her father, so kudos for honest emotion (something rarely seen in national conventions).
This was the end of the undercard, essentially. From this point on, we got the headliners. This started with another movie moment from Li'l Marco Rubio, who was straining as hard as he could to appear serious and somber and full of gravitas. He didn't noticeably succeed, even with the full-on "weighty moment" soundtrack behind him. He got in one good line at the end, as he fully endorsed Trump: "The time for fighting each other is over."
This thought was immediately proven far too optimistic, as Ted Cruz then took the stage. I have to say, before I even get started, that I feel more than a little bit sorry for Mike Pence. Here is his big night being introduced on the national stage, and he's going wind up being a footnote (at best) in tomorrow's headlines because of what happened during Ted Cruz's speech. Through no fault of his own, Pence was overshadowed by the deep and angry divisions which still remain in the Republican Party.
PBS had reported hours earlier that Ted Cruz might just not actually endorse Trump in his speech tonight, so it didn't come as a total shock to wonks. And the one silver lining in the entire fiasco for Republicans is that it didn't happen at the top of the primetime hour (as was the case for the Clint Eastwood/chair dialogue, for comparison).
Being forewarned, I was paying very close attention to the language Cruz chose. He started off by "congratulating Donald Trump for winning the primaries," but then edged and danced around actually endorsing him or saying he was going to vote for Trump. He then launched a pretty stock Ted Cruz speech (complete with his own version of the preacher's cadence), which could have been any stump speech he read while he was running. He riffed on the badness of Obama (um, Obama wants to "give away" the internet to Russia and China?), took some shots at Hillary (of course), and all the rest of his usual schtick.
Two points before we get to where it all went off the rails are worth mentioning. Cruz got one interesting bit of wordplay off with "Freedom matters" (his take, obviously, on "Black Lives Matter" and how it's morphed in the GOP to "Blue lives matter), which had to get a few points for cleverness. He seemed to be endorsing a candidate named "Freedom" for president for his entire speech, as a matter of fact.
Cruz even gave a big nod to Trump towards the end, by being (to my memory at least) the only Republican speaker thus far to use the "Build the wall" phrase in his speech. And he also (my ears are especially tuned to this particular dog-whistle) subtly wrapped his approval for Colorado to legalize marijuana in some Tenth Amendment language, just hinting at a longer statement he repeatedly made during his campaign (about how: "I don't agree with Colorado's legalization law and I wouldn't vote for it in Texas, but I think the states should be given the right to decide for themselves"). Like I said, you had to have the right dog's ears (so to speak) to even hear that one, but it's the closest any Republican has ever come to saying anything remotely pleasant about marijuana in any convention ever, so it's progress of a sort, to me.
This is where Cruz hit a turn on the railroad tracks posted at 45 mph, while fully roaring along at over 100. After a quick rah-rah mention of "RIT" just for good measure, and with the RNC official feed occasionally futzing out, Cruz headed into the final portion of his speech. He begged voters "don't stay home in November," but then only told them they were free to "vote their conscience" rather than endorsing (or even mentioning by name) Donald Trump.
The crowd's ears were indeed attuned to this particular dog whistle. After the leak earlier than he wasn't going to be endorsing, people in the arena were listening just as close as I was for what language he was using. And the whole "vote your conscience" thing has meant (this particular year) perhaps voting for Gary Johnson or anyone other than Trump. So the message was loud and clear to the delegates. And some of them were not amused, to put it mildly.
Immediately after he uttered the "vote your conscience" line, a vocal portion of the crowd started registering its disapproval. Bigly, as Donald Trump might have said. Now, I'm just going by my own ears and it's hard to hear chants through the microphones, but it sounded to me like it started with a simple chant of "Trump! Trump! Trump!" -- possibly (if Cruz was correct) led by the New York delegation (Cruz tried to laugh it off with a nod to New York's free speech rights or some such). But this quickly got louder and angrier, and morphed into a chant of "Keep your pledge!" -- referring to the pledge all the Republican presidential candidates signed (when they all thought they'd beat Trump) to ultimately support the eventual nominee. Cruz tried to brush the crowd's booing off again and again, but they came back with an even-louder chant of "En-dorse Trump!" which was accompanied by a whole lot of booing and general noisy disapproval. At one point, the crowd was almost louder than Cruz, and Cruz had the benefit of amplification on his side. But the crowd had the benefit of thousands of seriously angry delegates on their side, and they almost shouted him off the platform.
To be blunt, things got very ugly, very fast. Later, I learned that during all this, security hustled Heidi Cruz (his wife) out of the arena, as threatening catcalls were being made (some chanting "Goldman Sachs" at her, since she was a high-ranking executive for the company) towards her from the crowd. I have no way to confirm that one, as I haven't seen video of it yet, I should add.
The crowd got downright unruly, for a painful amount of time. There's just no other way to say it. Republicans loudly booing a Republican, at their own convention, for accepting an almost-primetime speaking slot without offering an endorsement to the party's nominee. The most cringeworthy moment had to have been Cruz reading (off the TelePrompTer, as he was soldiering on through the end of his prepared remarks) the obviously untrue line "We will unite this country" as a large portion of his party's delegates were trying to boo him off the stage. Chaos reigned, in other words. Lyin' Ted went out with a bang, folks.
To top it all off, Donald Trump himself made his entrance during the end of the Cruz train wreck, seating himself in his personal box seats with his family while boos echoed the rafters. You can bet you'll see that clip played over and over again, that's for sure.
All of this took place right before the broadcast network coverage was about to start -- the only silver lining for those who care about the image the Republican Party is portraying to America. But even so, it was all the commentators could talk about for the rest of the hour. We got a "son and daughter" little movie moment with Ivanka and Eric Trump, but none of the networks carried it, because they were still picking up their collective jaw off the floor.
The entire primetime hour's speeches was a complete afterthought, although to be fair it shouldn't have been. The schedulers had finally gotten things right, and we got a speech from Eric Trump, followed by a short introduction of her husband by Callista Gingrich. Newt's speech was capped off by vice-presidential nominee Mike Pence introducing himself to America. None of which will be noticed much in tomorrow's press reports, that's for sure.
Eric Trump did his best, but he's obviously not as polished as his bigger brother Donald Junior (who sat stony-faced through his brother's speech, hardly clapping at all). He tried his own "My father is running for you" refrain, but the crowd was still in a stirred-up mood and barely noticed.
Newt's third wife gave a speech just about as plastic as her skin, but to her credit she was one of the first speakers to notice that tonight was supposed to be Mike Pence's big night. She (thankfully) only spoke for a couple of minutes, as an introduction to Newt himself.
The only really notable thing about Newt's speech (he did the usual terrorists/Hillary-bashing/Obama-bashing/war-war-war thing many other speakers did for the rest of his time) happened at the beginning, when he ad-libbed a bit of spin, because he knew how badly the images of Cruz's speech were going to be in the media. He "mansplained" (or maybe "Newtsplained"?) how Ted Cruz had really actually endorsed Donald Trump after all! Hey, who are you going to believe, Newt or your lyin' ears? It was a smart, timely, and incredibly savvy attempt at media manipulation, but my guess is it isn't going to do a bit of good. The damage had already been done.
But I really did feel sorry for Mike Pence. His biggest political moment in the sun -- his big introduction to the national spotlight -- and it's going to be an afterthought, at best. Nobody's going to be saying much about his speech tomorrow. Which is a shame, in a way, because he really did kind of knock it out of the park. Pence was seen by many (myself included) as being a rather tame and boring pick for Trump. "Ho-hum" was the most common reaction, in fact. But tonight, he proved he can be an attack dog (if necessary), he can be a dynamic speaker, and he can hold an audience rapt with attention -- through dialing up the emotional levels and dialing it back down again, masterfully. I mean, he does kind of remind me (physically) of Ted Knight, but he is a competent politician, even I have to admit that after watching him speak. He actually did unify the crowd, drawing them back together, and got them stomping their feet and wildly cheering by the end of his speech. I have to say I have underestimated Pence, after watching this performance.
Pence stayed away from his trademark social issues, which all vice presidents are expected to do when their views disagree with the presidential candidates'. He got one or two good lines off of his own (speaking of the Trump family, he shared a down-home saying: "You can't fake good kids," which I thought was pretty effective). His "Secretary of the Status Quo" title for Hillary was also a crowd-pleaser. But by the end of the speech (which went on too long -- its only minor flaw), the crowd started spontaneously chanting "We like Mike!" which is rather evocative of Eisenhower's famous political slogan. He built to a very strong and rousing finish, and I sure won't be underestimating his political skills from now on.
But, like I say, I do feel kind of sorry for him. On the biggest night of his life -- the biggest speech he's ever given -- he's going to be a mere footnote or afterthought. Because tonight will go down in political history for Ted Cruz, his speech, his refusal to endorse Trump, and the crowd's reaction. People are already comparing it to the 1980 Democratic convention (Ted Kennedy vs. Jimmy Carter) and the 1976 Republican convention (Ronald Reagan vs. Gerald Ford). That's some pretty dysfunctional company to be included in (you'll note that both parties lost in November, in those particular years).
I'm not immune myself. Even though I thought Pence had a great night, I'm still left thinking only about Ted Cruz's future in the Republican Party. Will he be the automatic frontrunner in 2020 if Trump loses? Before tonight, I would have easily believed that. Now, I'm not so sure. If Trump loses, can Ted say "I was right" -- or will he be seen as a traitor to party unity forever by the rank and file? Insults like this usually cut pretty deep -- people remember these things, in other words -- and the only question is who will be insulted. If it's just "Johnny-come-lately" Trump supporters who are annoyed with the Republican establishment, that's one thing; but if it is "rank and file Republicans," the political career of Ted Cruz might be all but over. Time will tell.
Tonight's Republican National Convention train wreck wasn't the result of incompetent scheduling, unlike the first two days. Instead, it was due to insufficient vetting. Why was Cruz given a prominent speaking slot without being forced to publicly endorse Donald Trump? Why wasn't he told "Once you endorse Trump, we'll give you a juicy time slot," leaving the choice entirely up to him? By assuring him the slot without having to give a solid (and public) commitment, the Trump team set themselves up for this fiasco. But it's my bet that nobody's going to get fired for this disastrous decision, because that's not what the Trump team does.
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