藤兒點評：Trump「川普」一詞震耳欲聾，迴蕩全球每一個角落！「川普」Donald John Trump的勝利，就是講一口流利「川普」Trump的四川鄉巴佬的勝利。
Anti-Trump Republican's nomination challenge has been quashed by party brass.
反「川普」共和黨總統候選人提名的挑戰被共和黨大佬粉碎了。
It is hard to remember now how unlikely his victory once seemed. Just six months ago, when he lost the Iowa caucuses, he looked every bit the joke many assumed he was. But Trump kept winning, of course, and on Monday, July 18, 2016, he won again, erasing any doubt that he now rules the GOP... It is Trump's party now. There's no turning back.
CLEVELAND—We covered six national political conventions between 2004 and 2012, but we’d never witnessed any actual drama on the floor. That changed yesterday, when Nevertrump delegates staged a full-fledged kerfuffle.
“Chaos Erupts on GOP Convention Floor After Voice Vote Shuts Down Never Trump Forces,” Politico headlined. “Chaos” overstates the case (though we’re not sure if Elaine Chao was there). We’d say “tumult.” But given how scripted these things usually are, we’ll take it.
There were actually two voice votes on the question whether to approve the rules—the chief effect of which would be to bind delegates to their states’ primary and caucus results and thereby assure Donald Trump of the nomination. Judging purely by volume, the first voice vote seemed to go to the nays—although our sense was that pro-Trump delegates, having voted aye, continued shouting after the chairman called for nays.
The chairman, Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas, nonetheless declared “the ayes have it.” There was a brief recess, then a second voice vote. This time the Trumpers quieted when the Nevertrumpers nayed, and the ayes unmistakably had it. It was, at least, a more satisfactory resolution than Bush v. Gore.
We were in the nosebleed press seats watching with John Podhoretz and Daniel Halper, who are covering the convention for our sister paper, the New York Post. In his Commentary blog, Podhoretz observes:
Just as, at the 2012 Democratic convention, the chair (Antonio Villaraigosa) simply refused to “hear” the clear rejection of the voice vote in support of God and Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, so, too, can the chair call for a vote of acclamation, declare it passed, and move on.
We’d missed that episode at the 2012 DNC, but from what we heard it too rose to the level of a kerfuffle.
After the voice vote, a delegate from Utah moved for a roll call on the rules. As CNN reports:
Womack explained that seven states were required to demonstrate a majority of their delegates wanted a roll call vote. While those backing a vote believed they had achieved that number by filing nine petitions, Womack told the convention that three states had subsequently withdrawn their petitions for a roll call vote, meaning there were not sufficient votes to force such a roll call vote.
Even had there been a roll call vote, the Trump forces would likely have prevailed since the billionaire managed to win a majority of delegates in the GOP primary. The Trump forces were also backed by Republican National Committee officials in a sign of new coordination between the insurgent candidate and the institutional party establishment.
Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort said the roll call push “was not about Trump.”
“It would have been a meaningless gesture,” Manafort said. “We knew the result, everybody knew the result and it would have affected the schedule for tonight so it wasn’t something that was a wise choice.”
The scuttlebutt in the hall was that Manafort had engineered the counterrevolt, peeling off enough delegates from enough states to scuttle the roll call. Ryan Struyk of ABC News tweeted a list of the 11 states that had originally backed a roll-call vote (which we’ve made alphabetical): Alaska, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, North Dakota, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming. Among these, only Virginia and Washington were Trump states.
It’s probably right that the Nevertrump effort had no chance of succeeding. Even though Trump was said to have fewer than 900 “personally loyal” delegates—a majority is 1,237—we know delegates who were initially put off by Trump but eventually softened on him; and others no doubt were persuaded by the argument that they owed it to the voters to respect their will.
David Harsanyi complains at the Federalist that, as the headline puts it, “The Party of Trump Shuts Down Dissent.” True enough, but the GOP also shut down dissent in 2012, when it was the party of Mitt Romney and it adopted rules designed to prevent Ron Paul from taking the stage. What’s unusual about the party of Trump isn’t the suppression of dissent but the quantity of dissent.
On the other hand, the Trump camp showed the usual lack of finesse. USA Today notes that last week, after a Nevertrump failure in the Convention Rules Committee, Manafort commented, “We crushed them. Nevertrump is nevermore. They’re just gone.” Likewise Trump himself tweeted: “#NeverTrump is never more. They were crushed last night in Cleveland at Rules Committee by a vote of 87-12. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
This attitude has inspired some bitterness. Last night at a party sponsored by the Distilled Spirits Council, we spoke with an anti-Trump Trump delegate from Texas who wasn’t happy at all about the outcome. Trump ought to be more magnanimous, but such an exhortation no doubt is in vain: He doesn’t have it in him. And if Republican voters had wanted finesse and magnanimity, they’d have voted for . . . wait, Ted Cruz?
Some comic relief was provided by the marquee at the Quicken Loans Arena, on which the party was displaying tweets that included the #RNCinCLE hashtag. Halper photographed and tweeted one, from @JoshSchwerin that read: “How many nights will @RealDonaldTrump speak as the #RNCinCLE? (I’m hoping for 4).”
Halper astutely noted that Schwerin is the national spokesman for inevitable Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Schwerin’s tweet turns out to include a vote, in which 67% said they expect Trump to speak all four nights. They may be right; Mr. Trump showed up last night for a Bill Clinton-like grand entrance followed by a brief introduction of wife Melania (about whose speech see below).
Too late for yesterday’s column, we received a statement from the GOP about the “white elevators” sign, noted by our sharp-eyed news-side colleague Byron Tau and spun into a lurid racial fantasy by the propagandists at New York’s Daily News. The statement:
The RNC event management team selected our national colors of Red, White and Blue to be utilized for their new directional signage system installed for the RNC. The RNC has identified elevators and stairways in the arena by using the patriotic colors of Red, White and Blue.
Exactly as we’d guessed, down to the other colors.
So far, fears of a Chicago 1968 replay have not materialized. Tau, who’s covering the protest beat, told us at the Distilled Spirits Council party that things have so far been peaceful outside the security perimeter.
For our part, we saw a few protesters just outside the Secret Service checkpoint when we arrived in the early afternoon. Two middle-aged black men held a banner from something called the “Brain Power Club,” which turns out to be a project of Indian Muslim filmmaker Sajid Ali Khan. Its message: “Mr. Trump can’t even fix his own emotional health; how is he going to provide emotionally healthy leadership?”
One of the banner-carriers wore a T-shirt making the case for Mrs. Clinton: “A vote for Hillary is a vote for experience and wisdom.” Apparently the jury is still out on her emotional health.
Two Hardballs in One!
Cindy Sheehan: “I see Iraq as the base for spreading imperialism. And if we don’t stop them now, our babies and our unborn grandchildren will be fighting this.” Chris Matthews: “Are you considering running for Congress, Cindy?” Sheehan: “No, not this time. . . .” Matthews: “Okay. Well, I have to tell you, you sound more informed than most U.S. Congresspeople, so maybe you should run.”—from MSNBC’s “Hardball,” Aug. 15, 2005
“MSNBC host Chris Matthews slammed the Republican National Convention speech Monday by the mother of one of the four killed in Benghazi, saying he didn’t ‘care what that woman up there, the mother, has felt.’ ”—Washington Free Beacon, July 18, 2016
Two Presidents in One!
“Obama: Police Can ‘Make the Job of Being a Cop a Lot Safer’ by Admitting Their Failures”—headline, MRCTV.org, July 11
“Obama Urges Americans to Tamp Down Inflammatory Rhetoric”—headline, Associated Press, July 17
Problem and Solution
“‘I’ve Got to Mow My Lawn’: Here Are the Prominent Republicans Skipping the Convention and Why”—headline, Los Angeles Times, July 18
“Donald Trump—the Fear Sprinkler”—headline, Chicago Tribune, July 18
The Purloined Blather “In her first major address before the nation on Monday night, Melania Trump appears to have plagiarized a number of lines from first lady Michelle Obama’s speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention,” reports the Puffington Host. The similarities were spotted by self-described host, journalist, interior designer, DIY enthusiast, dope cook and carb-assassin Jarrett Hill.
Here they are, as quoted by Puffington:
“From a young age, my parents impressed on me the values that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say and keep your promise; that you treat people with respect,” Trump told the thousands of Republican delegates and assembled media on Monday night in Cleveland.
In 2008, Mrs. Obama said, “You work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you’re going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them, and even if you don’t agree with them.”
Trump’s spouse also lifted a line about children from Michelle Obama, saying, “We want our children in this nation to know that the only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.”
In 2008, Michelle Obama said, “We want our children—and all children in this nation—to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.”
This certainly makes the Trump campaign look amateurish. On the other hand, it’s hard to take this terribly seriously.
For one thing, as we observed in 2008—when Sen. Barack Obama was accused of plagiarizing the work of Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts—plagiarism is a much smaller offense in politics than it is in journalism or academia, fields whose practitioners are paid for their words.
Politico’s Michael Crowley tweeted that “in hindsight it did seem odd when Melania talked about the challenges of being a black woman at Princeton.” That’s a joke, of course—Mrs. Trump did not steal Mrs. Obama’s biographical details, unlike Joe Biden and Neil Kinnock’s back in 1988.
And how do we know Mrs. Obama’s words were original? The “your word is your bond” passage sounds as if it might have been lifted from the Code of the American Library Association: “Your word is your bond. You do what you say you are going to do and it matters to you lots when projects do not come through the way they should.”
So give Mrs. Trump a break. Give Mrs. Obama one, too. It’s pretty much impossible to be original when you’re saying something so banal.
