Day One Of GOP Convention Is Total Disaster - Fear, Hate, And Plagiarism

It was a truly surreal first day at the Republican National Convention. It started off with Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort calling Ohio Governor John Kasich an embarrassment for not endorsing Donald Trump. This was probably not the best idea as Ohio is a swing state and no Republican has ever won the Presidency without carrying the state. So it might be helpful to your campaign to make sure you do not antagonize the relatively popular governor of that state.

This was followed by the RNC apparently ignoring its own rules when the combination of Ted Cruz supporters and the StopTrump movement submitted petitions from nine states, two more than the required seven, to demand a roll call vote on approving the rules for the convention. After a significant delay in which the chairman of the convention at that time, Senator John Barrasso, actually left the podium, the RNC and Trump campaign seemingly managed to convince three of those delegations to withdraw their petitions, allowing the rules to be enacted simply by voice vote, although, as far as I can discern, no evidence of that was ever produced. Everyone knew that the petitioners were going to fail - they simply wanted a roll call vote so their objections could be heard and recorded. But the Trump campaign obviously felt a roll-call vote would highlight the divisions in the party and decided not to allow it. This created a furious reaction from the anti-Trump forces, with Ken Cuccinelli saying the RNC simply "cheated" and former Senator Gordon Humphrey saying delegates were acting like "brownshirts" and "fascists". Cuccinelli claimed that the Iowa delegation was threatened with losing its "first in the nation" primary status if they did not withdraw their petition, but the delegation subsequently denied that claim. And that was just the afternoon session.

The evening session was almost Orwellian in its darkness and fear and hatred. It began with the benediction by pastor Mark Burns that included "we got to be united, because our enemy is not other Republicans -but is Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party." He continued, "that we together can defeat the liberal Democratic party, to keep us divided and not united. Because we are the United States of America, and we are the conservative party under God." Highlights of what followed were Rick Perry giving a speech that barely mentioned Trump while his campaign web site was still touting the fact that Trump was no a true conservative; a couple of speakers about Benghazi! who reiterated the thoroughly debunked claim about a "stand-down" order; a soap star who believes that Obama is a Muslim from the Middle East; a county sheriff who was dressed like a four star general who quoted Martin Luther King and then, not 30 seconds later, accused the Occupy Movement and Black Lives Matter, both of which by and large used the very same non-violent tactics as King, of being anarchists; he pounded away about how unsafe Americans are while actual crime statistics show we are safer than we have been in decades; Rudy Giuliani and other fear-mongers who painted this as not just an election but an apocalyptic battle that must fought and won; said Giuliani, "There's no next election. This is it. There is no more time for us left to revive our great country." Finally, a real retired general came out and basically said Hillary should be locked up which is probably the first time we've heard that at a convention in a century or so.

This then paved the way for Donald Trump to briefly (for Donald) introduce his wife Melania for the highlight speech of the evening. In any other world, Melania's story would be uplifting, an immigrant who came to the US and made it. Of course, the story basically runs counter to the policies of the Trump campaign and its supporters. And she apparently gave a magnificent speech, (although I have to admit I had given up watching long before), that hit all the right notes and probably made some inroads with women that Trump has alienated. Unfortunately, a number of reporters thought they had heard some of her exact words somewhere before and a little bit of checking on the internet showed that they were lifted almost verbatim from a speech Michelle Obama gave at the 2007 Democratic convention. Here is Melania:

From a young age my parents impressed on me the values that you work hard for what you want in life. That your work is your bond and you do what you say and keep your promise. That you treat people with respect. They taught and showed me values and morals in their daily life. That is a lesson that I continue to pass along to our son, and we need to pass those lessons on to the many generations to follow because 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. I am fortunate for my heritage but also for where it brought me today.

And here is Michelle:

And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: that 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. And Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values, and to pass them on to the next generation. Because 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.

Oops! And what's even worse, she is stealing words from Michelle Obama! Of course, within a couple of hours, this plagiarism overshadowed not only Melania's speech but also (perhaps fortunately for the GOP) everything that came before. Of course, Melania had already told the press that she had written the speech largely on her own but it really is up to the campaign staff to vet what she was going to say and that clearly did not happen.

Now the obvious move would be to blame some campaign staffer/speechwriter for inserting these words and fire them. But this is the Trump campaign. After denying that any plagiarism had taken place late last night, this morning campaign chair Paul Manafort came out this morning and basically threw Melania under the bus, telling Charlie Rose on CBS, "She knew what she was doing."
I'm not really sure that throwing the candidate's spouse under the bus is good for your long term employment prospects. Combine that with the insult to Kasich and Ohio, you really have to wonder how much longer Manafort can survive. And, if he goes, you have to wonder who would be suicidal enough to take his job.

I just want to emphasize that the level of disconnect between reality and many of the early speakers in the evening was truly frightening. Despite the continued message of law and order throughout the night, it is readily apparent that usual norms of social behavior no longer applied to many of the speakers and Trump supporters. From strong-arming the rules through on a voice vote, to an opening benediction that declared half of America as enemies, to the lies about Benghazi and crime, to the apocalyptic view of this election, and ending with Melania's plagiarism, the contempt for the societal norms that they claimed to support was on full display. And this was just day one...