The Hay Ride called it a dumpster fire, rather than a convention.
Arkansas Congressman Steve Womack as presiding officer just called voice votes his own way, and rammed through Convention Rules denying eleven states on the record as asking for a roll call vote due process. The convention floor erupted in anger, and the Iowa and Colorado delegations walked out.
Former Senator Gordon Humphrey of New Hampshire said:
I sought to be recognized to raise a point of parliamentary inquiry and was immediately drowned out by people I would refer to as brownshirts in my surroundings. … You just saw the second most important item of business rushed through in a split second with no opportunity for debate, no opportunity for questions, no opportunity for points of order and no roll call vote although nine states under the rules requested a roll call vote, demanded a roll call vote, and should have been accorded that. So this was pretty shocking and shameful, I’ve seen a lot of, but this is not a meeting of the Republican National Committee. This is a meeting of brownshirts.
Totalitarianism was accompanied by unusual informality and carefully-assumed folksiness.
The informal speakers started off with Duck Dynasty’s hirsute Willie Robertson, wearing a patriotic American flag headband (!), with an open-collared pink polo shirt.
Marcus Luttrell survived Afghanistan, but apparently no necktie he owned did. He, too, addressed the convention with his collar wide open.
Former CIA Security Contractors from Benghazi John Tiegan and Mark Geist set some kind of new record for convention informality: neither wore a necktie, both addressed the convention wearing blue jeans, Tiegan’s jacket was patterned in some newfangled oil-stained camo and failed to cover a gold-and-silver belt buckle the size of a paperback book. Where are these guys’ former Marine Corps Drill Instructors when you need them?
The band later segued abruptly from “Brown-Eyed Girl” to “We Are the Champions” as Trump himself appeared suddenly silhouetted in smoke (having apparently arrived from his office in the Infernal Regions) to introduce his heavily-accented Croatian wife, Melania (who is, surprisingly, actually supporting him).
Melania proceeded to deliver a not-very-interesting speech, plagiarized in part, it turned out, from Michelle Obama (!).
Rudolph Giuliani, however, demonstrated that he, at least, really can deliver a barn-burner of a speech, in which he praised Donald Trump’s big heart and portrayed The Donald as a publicity-averse do-gooder. You could hear jaws dropping all over America.
I suppose the partisan rhetoric and hokum wasn’t that much worse than that at any other convention, but over everything hung the air of astonishment and the gloomy recognition that these people, this Republican Party, this GOP establishment had so readily, and so completely, sold out to an unprincipled, unethical demagogue peddling a bunch of unconservative snake-oil largely in complete contradiction to everything the Republican Party has theoretically stood for since 1980 at least, if not 1964.
I guess it all proves that those low-information Alt-Right peckerwoods were right, and we Movement Conservative intellectuals were wrong: the GOP establishment really is comprised of a bunch of total whores and opportunists.
I’m changing my voter registration to Independent today.
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Seattle Sam
The whole premise of the Trump campaign is that you can succeed by violating almost every norm of politics, so I don’t know why we should be surprised that the convention is moving that way also. But the whole thing reminds me of when I was a kid and my father used to kick the TV set in hopes that that would clear up the picture.
cactusjack
H.L. Mencken is having a good laugh somewhere. He was spot on.
LibertyorWhat??!!
You ain’t seen no totalitarianism ’til you see what President Clinton will lay on you. If we only had to worry about her personal lawlessness and avarice that would be one thing. The Democratic convention in a couple of weeks will be a good preview of the collection of felons and lunatics that will continue and multiply at the levers of government with her in the Oval Office.
DirtyJobsGuy
I love trumpkins. The whole premise is that Hillary is so bad that Trump has to be better. Yet he is a long time friend (if that has any meaning) of the Clintons with the attention span of a 12 year old. Why should we have any confidence he will do anything we are hoping, thinking, dreaming he would do? The GOP leadership thinks they can corral him and they may be right. Trumps too indisciplined to do much real work (much like Obama) and only needs constant flattery. Good party men can provide the flattery in truck loads
LibertyorWhat!!??
Don’t quite follow you DirtyJobsGuy. “The whole premise is that Hillary is so bad that Trump has to be better.” The premise is actually that in this unholy election cycle we have a choice between a person who has proven to be traitorous and to put her ambition over national security, not to mention being a pathological liar and a horrific human being who will stop at absolutely nothing including killing people to accomplish her goal of pushing the country farther to the left, and a rich apolitical megalomaniac about whom we know next to nothing except that he is a vulgarian with low sexual morals but somehow still has managed to be a devoted father. As you say, I don’t know what he will do. I know what she will do, and that’s enough for me.
Paul
Be sure to tune in the DNC convention. No doubt it will be much more to your standards. Lord knows They didn’t do anything to sway selection of their candidate.
Grognard
Ok. So you’re voting Independent.
Nice to know that you support Hillary.
She will appreciate your non-Trump vote come November.
I, personally, don’t like Trump. But I like Hillary even less.
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