A Wild Two Days at the GOP Convention

As I prepare to head to LAX for a nice extended trip to New York to see family and friends, I offer a few thoughts, comments and snide remarks about the second and third days of the Republican National Convention.

I have to admit, I was a little numb Tuesday when Donald Trump was officially nominated to be the President of the United States. And I must also admit, there’s a tiny part of me that’s hoping he’ll get up on stage to accept the nomination Thursday night and say, “Ha ha, I fooled all of you. I won, now good luck Mike!” He is not going to do this, of course, but there’s nothing wrong for wishing for things like winning the lottery. Anyway, here we go. I had no time to proof-read so I apologize for spelling errors, run-on sentences or other idiocies.

• The 2020 Campaign Begins: one of the biggest dramas of the day was the question about whether Ted Cruz would endorse the candidate during his speech Wednesday night. The Texas Senator, who finished in second place in the nominating process, took to the stage a few minutes after 9:30p ET to a rousing ovation and quickly congratulated Trump for winning the party’s nomination. And then, for the next 25 minutes, Cruz did not mention Trump’s name one time. He didn’t talk about himself much either; his speech wasn’t blatantly self-promotional but rather about conservative values, liberty and the Constitution. But towards the end of the speech it became obvious that he was not going to officially endorse Trump and many of the delegates starting booing as he finished. So as I’m writing this, the program is still going so these thoughts are unsullied by the views of the paid pundits.
  • I think this was a massive unforced error by Trump and his campaign to allow Cruz to speak at all. His speech was not vetted and, after the Chris Christie debacle four years ago (see below), it’s shocking that they gave him nearly half an hour of time without knowing whether he would support the candidate.  Cruz, at one point, told the audience in the arena and at home that they should go out and vote “their conscience” this November but did not specifically say that they should vote for Trump.
  • It’s pretty clear to me that Cruz will be running for president in 2020, even if Trump wins the presidency this November. It’s not unprecedented for a politician to challenge the sitting president; Edward Kennedy unsuccessfully tried to unseat Jimmy Carter in 1980. Whether this was a good move by Cruz will be debated for days and not known for years. I think he would have been smarter to tell people to vote for Trump, even if not a rousing endorsement. After all, Cruz is all about putting constitutional conservatives on the Supreme Court and a Trump presidency would clearly be better for the appointment of conservative justices than a Hillary Clinton administration.
  • When you’re getting booed off the stage, that tells me that you miscalculated. If Cruz had endorsed Trump and Trump loses, he could tell people that he did it for the Supreme Court “but you all know my heart wasn’t in it.” If Cruz had endorsed Trump and Trump wins, he could still challenge him in 2020 because it’s more likely than not that a Trump presidency will not go down in the history books along with Lincoln’s. Assuming that Trump does go on to lose, by deliberately and not endorsing Trump, in four years Cruz will have a very hard time winning over the Trumpians, who will partially blame him for The Donald’s defeat (as many blame Christie for Romney’s loss). Bottom line: it’s not a stretch to say that Ted Cruz may have just committed political suicide. In my view, Cruz should have stayed home. Like Mitt Romney did. Like the Bush family did. And like the hometown Governor John Kasich did.
• Newt Cleans up the Mess: in the “prime time” section of the convention on Wednesday night (between 10:00p and 11:00p ET when the major networks join the cable networks to cover the event), the speeches by former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Indiana Governor Mike Pence ran back-to-back. In what was not a surprise to me, Gingrich was absolutely brilliant. With the spectacle of Cruz’ nearly 30-minute non-endorsement speech, Trump had the gift of Gingrich speaking 25 minutes later. Newt can spin anything and applauded Trump’s generosity to allow his rivals to speak without even knowing whether they would endorse him thus turning the snub into a positive. I’ve said many times that Newt was Trump’s best option for Vice-President but he was convinced that courting the right wing of the base with the fiscally and socially conservative Pence was the right choice and even Gingrich himself has graciously said that it was a good decision. Besides displaying his typical fluency on foreign policy, Newt was a fantastic advocate for the candidate Wednesday night. Although he won’t be the VP, you can expect to see him on talk shows constantly for the next few months and will have a major role in a Trump administration if indeed there is one.
• Vice-Presidential Nominee Mike Pence: we all know that Trump still has many critics within the Republican establishment. When current Speaker of the House Paul Ryan made his address to the convention floor on Tuesday, he only mentioned Trump twice, but he did tell people to vote for him. It was a great move by the campaign to have Ryan introduce Pence because this was somebody, a long-time friend and colleague, that he could introduce without any reservations. The Indiana Governor was kind of dull but that may be precisely what Trump needs as a ticket-balancing running mate since nobody will ever accuse The Donald of being dull. Pence did a nice job making the case for Trump and got his biggest applause with the line “you can’t fake good kids,” highlighting the family that is Trump’s biggest asset. My favorite line of Pence’s speech: “he’s a doer in a business of talkers.” Oh, so Trump doesn’t talk much?
• Plagiarism-Gate: we learned a few things about the media frenzy regarding a couple of paragraphs that Melania Trump lifted from the convention speech given in 2008 by Michelle Obama. It took over 24 hours but today we learned that a long-time Trump Corporation employee wrote the draft of the speech. Melania, an admirer of Mrs. Obama, told this employee over the phone that she liked certain lines from Michelle’s 2008 speech. The amateur speech-writer (Meredith McIver) admitted that she used the lines and did not check them against the actual speech.
  1. The mainstream media goes into an absolute frenzy any time there is a real or perceived mistake by the Trump campaign. Most of them, to be fair, came to Melania’s defense, assuming (correctly) that it was an error by a staffer and that said staffer should be immediately be fired.
  2. Donald Trump is loyal to his people. He refused to accept McIver’s resignation, saying that she everyone was entitled to make a mistake.
  3. The Trump campaign is not a first-class presidential campaign organization. Campaign manager Paul Manafort spent all of Tuesday denying that there was any plagiarism when it was completely obvious that there was. This news should have been put to rest Tuesday morning but the campaign let it fester for another news cycle.
  4. If you care about learning about all of the news regarding the conventions, you cannot trust Sean Hannity from Fox News. Because I’m a former TV producer, I tend to fall into the role sometimes of a media critic. I was flabbergasted that, while CNN and MSNBC were treating the potential plagiarism in Melania’s speech as the biggest and only news story from the evening, Hannity ignored it completely. If he wanted to focus on the positives, that’s fine, we all know that he serves as Trump’s unofficial Super PAC. But you have to at least spend a little time talking about what was become the lead story elsewhere. Bret Baier would have. Megyn Kelly would have.
• The Children were the Stars: during Tuesday evening’s program, two of the best received speakers were 22-year old Tiffany Trump (Marla Maples’ daughter) and 38-year old Donald Trump Jr., the billionaire’s oldest child. Tiffany brought humanity to her father and Donald Jr. brilliantly tied themes of humanity, parenting, and hard work. The anecdotes he shared about how Trump and his children would get into the trenches with the workers, that he didn’t spend all of his time in an ivory tower. It humanized Donald Trump the bombastic candidate and strengthened his bond with his core voting constituency, the average working class voter. Donald Jr.’s speech was universally applauded by pundits on the left and the right with many mentioning that he had a clear future in politics himself if he wanted to go that way. Although not in the league of his older brother, Eric Trump did a fine job Wednesday night as well.
• Chris Christie’s Mulligan: two speakers in particular Tuesday night made a devastating case against Hillary Clinton. Former Attorney General Mike Mukasey spelled out what should have been the charges against Mrs. Clinton in “email-gate,” disagreeing with FBI Director Comey’s conclusion that no reasonable prosecutor would bring charges. But the real star in the prosecution against Hillary’s record as Secretary of State was delivered by Chris Christie. The New Jersey Governor went through several foreign policy issues in which he felt Secretary Clinton had failed. He drew some rather tenuous conclusions about Mrs. Clinton’s culpability but it was a speech delivered with devastating effect. The reason I’ve called this a “mulligan” for Christie is that, in 2012, he was granted the privilege of delivering the keynote speech at Mitt Romney’s convention. Like Cruz on Wednesday, Christie spent 20 minutes without mentioning the candidate, not even saying Romney’s name until he was nearly done with his long-winded self-serving speech (at least he told the folks to vote for him). Whatever you think about the big man’s performance this year, his speech was designed to elevate the GOP candidate and make the case against his opponent. The Jersey Governor was a finalist for VP in both 2012 and 2016 and wound up playing the bridesmaid. His 2012 speech was completely self-serving; his 2016 effort was more selfless (although, of course, he may have been auditioning for a role as Attorney General).
• “Lock Her Up”?: one thing that’s really been bothering me in the first few days of the convention have been the chants from the Republican delegates of “Lock Her Up,” referencing Hillary Clinton of course. The delegates chanted those words several times during Christie’s speech (as well as others, including retired Lt. General Michael Flynn, who repeated the words himself, on Monday). This is not good for a campaign that wants to reach undecided or independent voters. While many people find Hillary dishonest and untrustworthy, most reasonable people would not want to punish her with a jail cell. I’ve said this before: at some point, when he needs to make news, Trump should say that, if elected president, he’ll launch a further investigation into the Clinton Foundation but then mention, “you know, I’d probably pardon her as Gerald Ford did with Richard Nixon, but we need to get to the bottom of this.” By offering a pre-emptive pardon that he’ll likely never have to give, Trump would soften his “mean” image and tie “Crooked Hillary” with “I am not a crook” Nixon.

Thanks for reading!

Chris Bodig