Pence remained popular for his first couple of years as governor, but that would not last, according to Christine Matthews, a Republican pollster and president of Bellwether Research Group. “I don’t want people to think I’m grandstanding”, he told the Times, “but it would get high ratings”. Less than an hour later, the former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said that Trump is the only candidate to meet the standards set by Cruz.
Advertisement
Serene and mature, Pence provided the superego to Trump’s id, yet identified their common ground: They’re both so indisputably American: “He’s the genuine article”, Pence said. “We needed him. He’s a great conservative”.
In his speech, Mr Trump offered little in the way of details about his policies but rather portrayed himself as a fresh alternative to traditional politicians, willing to consider new approaches to vexing problems and help working-class people who might feel abandoned. Who will replace Pence as the Republican candidate for governor?
Warren told Colbert that Clinton “has lots of good choices and I’m excited to see who she’s going to pick”. “A vote for anyone other than Trump is a vote for Hillary Clinton”. Before he sawed the convention in half, Cruz spent most of his speech espousing conservative ideals – but he had to know the way he closed his speech would be the real newsmaker, nullifying everything he had said before.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz fired up the crowd for quite a while, but the cheers turned to boos when he uttered the rally cry of the “Dump Trump” movement. Instead, everyone from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to Gen. Mike Flynn to anonymous Republican National Committee functionaries lit into Cruz as a traitor.
“All right, that was pretty well-orchestrated”, he said.
“He went back on his word to support the nominee”. Trump on Friday said that’s okay, he wouldn’t accept Cruz’s endorsement anyway.
Ted Cruz, with his wife Heidi, announced the suspension of his campaign in May. There would be no moment of video for the networks to play over and over again and no moment to overshadow Eric Trump who was coming on stage right after Cruz to testify to his father’s character, which was to have been the entire point of the convention.
“Overwhelmingly people (in the delegation) are upset with Cruz, even Cruz supporters”, said delegate Matthew Ridenhour, a Mecklenburg County commissioner.
A prominent Donald Trump delegate from New Hampshire says Hillary Clinton should be “put in the firing line and shot for treason”, over the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans.
Newt Gingrich soon came on and tried to fix the rift by trying to convince the crowd Cruz really had endorsed Trump.
Some delegates to the Republican National Convention are upset that Ohio Gov. John Kasich (KAY’-sihk) is skipping out on the main events. And not because of the fantasy of Never Trumpers that the convention would somehow be contested, a dream that finally died on Monday on the floor of the Quicken Loans Arena.
Mr Trump has meanwhile said that if he is elected president he might abandon a guarantee of protection to fellow North Atlantic Treaty Organisation countries.
Mr Trump said he wanted to reduce USA military expenditure and involvement overseas. His speech Wednesday night dutifully bolstered the credentials of Trump to be commander in chief, while giving the nation a sense of who the new GOP running mate was. This has become the “lock her up” convention. Newt Gingrich, speaking after Cruz, was smart enough to know that it would be a mistake to rebuke him frontally. “She’ll get us the rest of the way”.
Advertisement
Takeaway: If Trump can’t run his own convention, how can he run anything more complex?
