Party insiders have been struggling in the weeks since the NY real estate tycoon wrapped up the nomination to fully back their chosen nominee.
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Portman said he supports Trump, but has a busy schedule of outside events, including kayaking with wounded veterans and working in a Habitat for Humanity project.
“They’re going to enjoy it”, Boston said.
But, after months of hurling insults at almost everyone in sight – everyone, that is, who dared to disagree with him – here he is. “Regardless of our home state and background, we come together as one body to select our nominee for president of the United States”.
Somewhere in the neighborhood of 11 million Republican primary and caucus-goers said so.
He dismissed concerns about party unity, as most of the GOP’s previous nominees are not going to Cleveland, nor are two of Trump’s Floridian rivals, Sen. Trump, to them, represents that change – even though the details of what would change and how it would change are still pretty vague.
Trump will have to overcome lukewarm support – if not outright opposition – from a substantial contingent of the 2,470 Republican delegates convening in Cleveland for a four-day convention meant to unify the party behind the NY billionaire and against Clinton.
And then we will be off to the races. “And I think that we’ll have a convention that will give our nominee the best chance to make the argument that he is better than Hillary Clinton”.
But it will be a unusual convention indeed. Yet Thursday’s lengthy RNC Rules Committee exchanges between the “Never Trump” camp and Trump’s supporters highlighted the lingering divisions headed into the full convention. Daugherty has been to two previous conventions, in 2008 and 2012. John McCain of Arizona.
Kasich, who ended up with 161 delegates, never hid his disdain for Trump; and railed against what he called Trump’s divisive politics throughout the battle for the nomination. A year ago, few imagined Donald Trump as a headliner at the Rep…
The party elected three Volusia County residents to serve among Florida’s 99 delegates: Tony Ledbetter and Alan Burton of Ormond Beach and Dana Daugherty of Deltona.
But first-time attendee Jennifer Newendyke, 21, was less interested in a seeing a Trump pep rally among party loyalists who remain deeply divided over the presumptive nominee.
“I think, all in all, the convention’s going to be pretty uneventful”, he said. “The divisions in the party are not that great”.
But Doug Rankin, an alternate delegate to the convention from Collier County, thinks it fits _ sort of. But he has more than enough delegates.
As for who Dent will vote for November 8, based on how the ballot is shaping up, he would only say, “We’ll see”.
“I feel like I was voted on as a Cruz delegate but Cruz hasn’t stuck it out”, Espling said. Her decision has nothing to do with Trump, she said, adding that he’s “fine with me”.
But the state party’s embrace of Trump is “tepid at best”, Stipanovich said.
This year’s RNC may be a grand old segregated party.
This will be Christie’s fifth Republican National Convention and she says she has “absolutely no idea what will happen” – either inside the convention hall or outside on the streets of Cleveland.
“My own personal opinion is just one vote”, she said.
Christie said if the election were held right now, “I’d vote for him”.
Unruh cited pressure tactics by Trump campaign and GOP officials for peeling away support for her proposal. He won’t be involved in the Trump campaign here this year.
Certainly Trump has more states than just OH on his mind. “We’ve got to stop the nearly innumerable wars that we’re fighting”. “I’m not wild about him. And he knows it”.
“That would be a disaster, ” Hartmann said.
One Republican lawmaker who will be in Cleveland is state Sen.
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“I’m happy that we’re not going to spend the time in a circular firing squad next week, ” he said. That’s the important thing to me. But he left no doubt in a sometimes awkward event that Pence’s role will surely be as sidekick to the businessman-turned-reality-star-turned-politician at the top of the ticket.
