GOP Convention Nightmare

There was a Politico piece that the GOP was dreading the convention.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/gop-insiders-dreading-trump-convention-225682?lo=ap_d1

No wonder. In the post 1968 convention world, actual news is never supposed to happen. There is a lot of news out in Cleveland today.

"Chaos broke out at the Republican National Convention after Republican leaders blocked a full floor vote on the convention rules."

"Critics of Donald Trump had attempted to force the vote and submitted the signatures they believed were necessary to do so, but after holding a voice vote on the rules, Rep. Steve Womack declared the rules approved and moved on."

"Womack left the stage amid an uproar, only to return to the stage moments later for a second voice vote. He again declared that the 'ayes' had won, again to protests from the crowd."

"Forcing a roll call vote requires support from the majorities of seven delegations. Anti-Trump delegates submitted what they said were a majority of signatures from at least 9: Colorado, Washington state, Utah, Minnesota, Wyoming, Maine, Iowa, Virginia and Washington, D.C. The also claimed that Alaska had provided signatures as well."

"But Womack, after the second voice vote, said on stage that three states had withdrawn from the roll call effort, leaving it short of the support needed."

"The vote thwarted and the convention rules deemed approved, the convention moved on to a discussion of the official party platform."

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/never-trump-delegates-have-support-needed-to-force-rules-vote-225716#ixzz4EnPhbe6H

It's dubious wether the 'ayes' really had it. In any case, the damage is already done:

"For Republicans desperately hoping that unity would be the word of the day and the week here in Cleveland, however, the damage was done. The images of unhappy Republicans shouting for a chance to show their dissatisfaction with Trump and then walking out makes for just the sort of images out of this week that Republicans were hoping to avoid."

"It showed, powerfully and with the eyes of the national media watching, that the idea that the GOP was rapidly uniting behind Trump is a pipe dream. And that divisions -- real and serious ones -- remain, no matter the rhetorical attempts to paper them over."

"Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, once a potential Trump VP, took the stage soon after the eruption. She spent her time touting the party's unity and the inclusive process of building the party platform. But, no one was listening. Everyone was still talking about how the "Never Trump" forces went down in a blaze of glory."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/18/the-republican-party-just-had-a-nightmare-moment-on-the-convention-floor/?postshare=1741468874789224&tid=ss_tw

Trump has been trying to do a Richard Nixon lately, claiming that he's the Law and Order guy. Greg Sargent convincingly argues this is not 1968.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/07/18/sorry-donald-trump-it-isnt-1968/

Yet, maybe it is with the catch that, this year, the GOP is where the Dems were in 1968. In truth they are but in even worse shape.

"Legend has it that after leveling Carthage in the Third Punic War, Roman army generals ordered that the city’s fields be sown with salt so that they’d lie fallow for years, Roman generals not being particularly well known for their benevolence in victory."

"Many Republicans think Donald Trump’s nomination is doing roughly the same thing to their party: destroying any chance for growth it once had and leaving the GOP to wither and die on Trump vineyard vines."

“My general sense, looking at this election, is that what we’re witnessing here is the end of something much more than the beginning of something,” Yuval Levin, editor of the conservative policy journal, National Affairs told me recently.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-end-of-a-republican-party/?ex_cid=538twitter

The future is looking bright. But, then, I'm a Democrat