The Republican National Convention in Cleveland is an absolute dumpster fire. Some of us knew it would be, but wow. As The Who’s Eminence Front played late into the night Wednesday—a song Pete Townshend said is about “what happens when you take too much white powder”—I could only sit in awe at the lyrical allusions offered.
“It’s an eminence front
It’s an eminence front, it’s a put on
It’s a put on, it’s a put on, it’s a put on”
This convention is playing out like something from an alternate universe. Yet it was (almost) entirely predictable.
On Monday, Melania Trump gave a wonderful speech. Warm, heartfelt, and sincere. Except a decent chunk of it was plagiarized from Michelle Obama’s speech in 2008, and the resulting fallout was handled by the campaign with the grace of a bleeding gargoyle, and the speed of a stoned sloth.
On Tuesday, it was all about Making America Work Again. But hardly anybody talked about jobs, instead focusing their ire on Hillary Clinton, riling the crowd up into chants of “Lock her up!” Nobody could tell us why we should vote for Trump, only why we shouldn’t vote for Hillary—hardly a convincing argument.
And on Wednesday, Ted Cruz delivered a proverbial chair shot to the back of Donald Trump that would make Vince McMahon proud.
This doesn’t include people repeating Benghazi lies on day one, a general theme of death from a majority of speakers, malfunctioning screens, Z-list stars like Scott Baio and the dude from Duck Dynasty, and Rudy Giuliani screaming at us through the TV.
The thing is, even candidates we may philosophically disagree with can have very smart people running their campaign. At the very least, they can put on a good convention, and make their candidate seem convincing to a very large portion of the electorate. Well-run campaigns are effective at making their candidates seem more likable and trustworthy, despite previous inclinations otherwise.
This year, both parties have this particular problem. But as we enter the final day of the Republican Convention, the only thing that’s clear is Donald Trump has no serious campaign infrastructure whatsoever. It’s turned this convention into a disaster.
As I referenced above, there are a myriad of events to choose from in which to showcase the ineptitude of Trump’s campaign, but for the purposes of this diatribe, I want to put aside the obvious Melania speech blunder—where they denied plagiarism, then said maybe there was some plagiarism, then admitted it but did nothing about it—and instead focus on Ted Cruz’s speech Wednesday night.
To sum it up: Ted Cruz gave a 2020 campaign stump speech for Ted Cruz at the 2016 Republican National Convention. He never endorsed Donald Trump, never endorsed Mike Pence, never endorsed the platform of the campaign, and never said Donald Trump’s name except once, at the very beginning, when he congratulated him on becoming the party’s nominee. Cruz told the delegation to “vote with your conscience” and to “vote up and down the ticket” for candidates they liked, not once explicitly telling them that Trump was that guy.
Make no mistake; Cruz knew exactly what he was doing. He was never going to support the guy who bashed his wife and tried to link his father to the JFK assassination. This was carefully crafted and expertly calculated, down to the last word. And it was a good speech. But by the end, the crowd turned hostile on Cruz, booing him off the stage when it became apparent he was not going to endorse Trump.
So the next logical question is, how could this happen?
There are really only two plausible explanations for how Ted Cruz was allowed to say what he said last night at the convention. The first one is that the campaign read Cruz’s speech, and either didn’t think much of it, or didn’t have the foresight to recognize the potential catastrophe looming. I’m sure they anticipated some blowback in the hall for Cruz, but nothing to the level it escalated toward. They were looking for minor hiccups and disorder that would cast more of a shadow on Cruz than the convention itself. They would then move on with the rest of the convention, and Cruz would be a mere sad footnote instead of a blockbuster front-page headline.
The second explanation is that this was all a setup by the Trump campaign. They knew in advance exactly what Cruz was going to say. They had a transcript. They had someone put it in the teleprompter. The only thing that caught them off guard was how long it took Ted Cruz to deliver the speech (reportedly, they gave him ten minutes, but he went on for twenty-three). So, by knowing what the speech really said—and perhaps, more to the point, what it did not say—they correctly anticipated chaos on the convention floor, and may have even perpetuated it themselves with their people riling up the crowd. Trump himself came out before the speech was over, literally stealing the spotlight. They wanted to humiliate Cruz in front of the country.
If this is true, in my mind it’s worse than the alternative. First, this places personal vendettas above the good of the party, and the campaign itself, which at a convention is unheard of. Second, even if the campaign really wanted to embarrass Cruz and show the country what kind of a guy he really is, why do it on Wednesday night in primetime, so very close to Governor Mike Pence’s vice presidential acceptance speech? Why not do it on Monday, or bury it sometime in the early evening hours of Tuesday when most people weren’t watching? Why risk potentially stealing the thunder from your VP pick, who, by the way, gave a good speech that no one will remember?
Furthermore, it’s very difficult for me to believe that Pence would be okay with this setup happening. He would have known the great risk involved in it possibly not only detracting from his speech, but also rendering it completely irrelevant in the media circus that would surely follow. It’s also difficult for me to believe that Newt Gingrich knew about this, as he clearly ad-libbed the beginning of his own speech to calm the crowd down.
It doesn’t make any sense.
And that’s the real issue here. It’s not malfunctioning equipment or 80’s celebrities or despicable sheriffs. It’s that this campaign not only lacks serious infrastructure, it’s completely devoid of any tactical political experience whatsoever. Remember, they all supposedly read the transcript of Cruz’s speech hours before he gave it. They handed it out to the media prior to Cruz addressing the convention. There is an inherent risk in allowing Cruz to give that speech at all. The chances of it being well received by those disgruntled in the base, or by a percentage of on-the-fence independent voters were far too high by any reasonable standard.
No legitimate campaign would allow Cruz to give that speech. It’s not that the risk/reward factor was too high, it’s that the reward portion wasn’t apparent at all. Did they really believe that Cruz’s speech would somehow galvanize conservatives all over the country to unify behind Trump? Did they really believe, after a tumultuous two-and-a-half days, this would be the seminal moment that brought the party together?
Whatever you may think of Trump or his politics, it shouldn’t be difficult to accept that his campaign has done him a great disservice at the convention. From Melania’s speechwriter plagiarizing, to placating insane chants from the crowd, to Cruz’s speech, it should be evident that those in charge of Trump’s campaign don’t have the requisite experience or intelligence needed.
Yes, this campaign has thrived on the turmoil it has wrought. But the game has changed. Winning the primaries and winning the general election are two very, very different things. It’s as if no one ever told the campaign the primary race is over.
As Cruz was finishing his speech, the giant video screens flickered behind him, distorting the Orwellian images above. By the time Newt Gingrich took the stage, the screens went completely black. Read whatever symbolism into that you will, but if this were a scripted episodic television show, it would be rejected for being too heavy-handed and clichéd.
We still have one night left to go, with Donald Trump taking center stage.
It’s a put on, it’s a put on, it’s a put on.
A Pleasant Conversation 