Speeches by Trump’s eldest daughter, Ivanka, and by the tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel both struck notes of inclusiveness and opportunity, and the crowd rewarded them with massive standing ovations.
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“To those listening, please, don’t stay home in November”.
“Ted Cruz said you can vote your conscience for anyone who will uphold the Constitution”, Gingrich said.
Cruz’s rallying call to conscience, however, went down like a lead balloon.
“It’s taken me about 30 minutes to calm down and stop shaking with anger”, said Erik Layton, an alternate delegate from California who had shouted: “Go home” at Cruz after his speech. “I just don’t know why Cruz did this. It baffles my mind”. But it was a bitter primary fight, and the degree to which Cruz would offer support to Trump in his speech was one of the most anticipated moments of the convention.
And it will be a long time before I will feel any loyalty to a party leadership that was so tunnel-vision focused on “winning” that it sidled up to Trump the second it became clear he was going to get the required number of delegates. But he said Cruz “didn’t honor” the pledge that Republican primary candidates had made to support the eventual GOP nominee.
Illegal immigration is also well off its peak – the undocumented population in America has declined since President Obama took office based on the most recent available estimates – and polls suggest Trump’s base is unique in their intense concern. That was one more mention than Senator Ted Cruz, a distant runner-up in the primaries and talented orator, afforded Mr Trump.
“That is the standard we should expect”, Cruz said, “from everybody”.
Or, as has so often been the case in this 2016 race, the conventional wisdom could be all wrong, and the next batch of White House hopefuls will have to bide their time serving under President Donald J. Trump.
Donald Trump is undeniably the star of tonight’s final segment of the Republican National Convention but there’s another Trump who is generating interest as well. The Nielsen company said 23.4 million people watched Wednesday night’s session, up from the 21.9 million who watched the penultimate night of the 2012 Republican convention. This surprise knocked the convention off track, and enabled Cruz to overshadow the vice presidential nominee, Indiana Governor Mike Pence.
The point echoed throughout – from his guarantee to bring jobs “roaring back into our country… fast” to his promise that “we will be a country of generosity and warmth” but also “of law and order” to his vow to “rescue kids from failing schools by helping their parents send them to a safe school of their choice”.
It was, he said, God’s calling to serve. Example: Then-candidate Rick Perry once gave a speech entitled, “Defending conservatism against the cancer of Trumpism”. The overall immediate sentiment was slightly more positive than negative, according to social media analytics firm Zoomph. Is it because Ted Cruz is a “G”, a real life political gangster who says what he believes and doesn’t care?
The third night of this extravaganza had all the usual hoopla – plus a blackout on the jumbo screens, delegates screaming at each other, and a major presidential candidate getting booed off the stage. The great irony of what initially looked like a debacle is that there seemed to be more defense of and unification behind Trump than there had been over the course of the first couple days of the event.
People close to Cruz, who would normally know what is going on, who had talked to him in the last few hours, said they had no idea what he would do.
“Our nation is exceptional because it was built on the five most handsome words in the English language: ‘I want to be free, ‘” he said in his speech.
Trump promised to be the voice for the “forgotten men and women of our country”, portraying Clinton as a corrupt elitist while arguing he’s the only one who can save the republic from a world he portrayed in apocalyptic terms. Ted Cruz, however, did not.
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A look back at the 1976 Democratic National Convention in NY shows a visibly confident Jimmy Carter, whose acceptance speech was the culmination of his own Trump-like populist ascendancy over the Democratic establishment of the day. On Monday, chaos erupted when Trump opponents inside his party stormed out of the room and others chanted to vent frustration over a failed attempt to force a vote in opposition to Trump.
