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RNC Day Three Wrap Up
This is a preview from Thursday morning’s The Daily Shot newsletter. Subscribe here free of charge.
The theme of the penultimate night of the Republican National Convention was “Make America First Again.” (We’re still not sure what that means…) While the eight o’clock hour featured a collection of minor figures (Sorry, Laura Ingraham), there were some heavy hitters. At different points in the night Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Mike Pence all addressed the convention.
Of the four, Walker went first. The dais had an enormous jumbotron behind it, and Walker was backed by a wheat field with a barn behind it with an American flag on the side. (Hey, it’s the RNC…) Despite holding one, Walker didn’t realize he had a microphone so he shouted the whole time. The refrain of his speech was “America deserves better.”
Rubio, who didn’t come to Cleveland, addressed the convention by pre-recorded video. He was very brief, going just 84 seconds. Rubio attacked Hillary Clinton, contrasted her to Donald Trump, and said it was time for all Republicans to “come together” in order “to win in November.”
The star of the evening was supposed to be Mike Pence. This was his big introduction to America. His speech had everything you’d expect in a political speech: cornfields, Martin Luther King, his father, his mother, his wife, his kids, jokes that don’t quite work, small towns, droppin’ his “g”s, and quoting both Ronald Reagan and the Pledge of Allegiance. (It’s nice to know the generic Republican speech generator software still produces a consistent product.) At the end, Trump came out to shake his hand, give a thumbs up, and briefly point at Pence. In total, Trump was out for about 45 seconds, and then walked back offstage.
But the speaker who made all the biggest splash was Ted Cruz. He stole all the headlines for what he didn’t say: he didn’t endorse Donald Trump. In fact, he only mentioned Trump’s name once, right at the beginning, to congratulate him on winning the nomination. (Which is the same number of times he mentioned LeBron James.)
What he did say was three words: “Vote your conscience.” Specifically he said, “If you love our country, and love our children as much as you do, stand, and speak, and vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom, and to be faithful to the Constitution.”
And that’s when the crowd kinda freaked out on him. Luckily Cruz was near the end of speech, because the delegates kinda went bonkers. He got boos and chants of “We want Trump,” which were picked up by the microphones, because the front around the dais was packed with the most pro-Trump delegations.
To try to steal the show, Trump appeared at the back in the VIP box as Cruz was just finishing. But either Cruz timed things really well, or he knew when to bug out, because he finished shortly after, although his final poetic notes were drowned out with boos.
Speaking after Cruz, Newt Gingrich tried to reinterpret Cruz’s non-endorsement, recasting it as an endorsement, but it didn’t quite work. The damage was done and Cruz’s point had been made.
This is a preview from Thursday morning’s The Daily Shot newsletter. Subscribe here free of charge.
Published in General
Politics is a short and long game. Wonder if Ted would have sought and expected Donald’s endorsement had Ted won?
Many won’t remember what Ted did or did not do. Some will. Ted remains the self righteous candidate of a core of believers. He probably did not widen his base last night. That is a shame.
As maybe 1/3rd of the GOP on a good day, Tedvolk are not enough to win a general election except by “default” (he’s better than a bad candidate). He doesn’t sell well outside his base. His high water mark may have been this year when the prospect of running against a flawed Hillary and a socialist loomed. But even then, ….
Ted ‘s real problem is the next time the Dems will have a stronger candidate if Hillary doesn’t win and if she does, she will be an incumbent slinking around the White House in her pajamas wearing her parallelogram glasses to keep from bumping into stuff. But, she will still be the incumbent and first woman president. Can’t have the first woman be a one termer can we?
As always, very astute observations Mr. Madison.
Ted Cruz remains a “self righteous candidate”. And it is more external calculation and image than internal truth. Because of this, “Tedvolk are not enough to win a general election”.
It is a shame that the best of the non-Jeb contenders (Cruz, Rubio, Walker) didn’t come up with a better more coordinated strategy to have a conservative win this primary back in May, 2015. They tripped all over themselves and allowed The Donald a weakly contested race.
Not Invited: Adelsons Bar Cruz From Donor Suite After He Refused To Endorse Trump
A Very Small Man
Turd sandwich.
I think that republics must not be able to get past 250 years
Truth, our great list of candidates were not as great as we thought. Put two or three of them together and you would have had a winner. But under the spotlight, they melted like the spring snow in New Hampshire.
What was missing? A candidate who was compelling to more than 30-50% from the get go.
It is much harder for a Republican candidate to get elected and it has less to do with the media and more to do with character, communications and ideas.
Once again, another cynical, nasty, badly written (kinda) attack. If this is the face Ricochet wants to show, it risks ending up like Ted Cruz. No future.
I’m no wide-eyed partisan. I can smell canned politics like a drug dog, but this is a report I’d expect from a commenter in an MSNBC chat room.
Laura Ingraham, called a ‘minor figure’ as though her status relative to other famous Republicans in a different category is supposed to mean something, absolutely killed it. Her speech was powerful. Other minor figures made excellent character witnesses for Trump.
The author omits entirely Eric Trumps magnificent performance. If Donald doesn’t know conservatism, his sons Donald jr. and Eric sure do. I wish more elected Republicans could make speeches like that. Heck, if Mitt Romney and John McCain could have had their level of understanding of conservatism and forceful delivery Obama might still be a minor figure in the US Senate or a retired one term President.
Newt casually and brilliantly laid out the case for Donald and against Hillary. His 4 minutes on terror attacks around the world in the last 37 days was eye-opening for anyone even if they have been paying attention.
Pence was great and may well turn out to be the very best choice Trump could have made. Another good decision. It is clearly a better decision than boyish Paul Ryan or train-wreck Sarah Palin.
Overall, a very partisan and uninformative report.
Truth. While not desirable, it is the reality of our time. American Idol: POTUS Edition. And it does require a candidate to be more genuine than calculated and more personable than wooden. Tedvolk, of which I was one until I fell into disbelieving his contrived public image, were just too small and they just got a lot smaller. Sure, there will now be Rubio, Walker, Carson, etc. ‘volk who will mouth fealty to Cruz over his “principle”, but it is merely anti-Trump and will not be lasting. Cruz’ll be ditched in a nanosecond for the more dreamy candidate (think Marco) in the future.
THIS^
Time for Fred to move on.
Understanding “Putting America Fist” requires Potter Stewart semantics.
In reverse: You know it when you don’t see it. (Which is not to say it’s cable porn)
We haven’t seen it for long time.