This Weak in Politics — Special GOP Convention Edition
July 21, 2016
Tonight was the biggest, dare we say yuuugest night of the GOP convention, and Donald Trump did it up bigly. The party, in turn , went from quiet resignation to getting fully on board, probably driven there by the upbeat message of “We’re all gonna die! Lock her up!”
Trump officially accepted the nomination of his party and formally took over the reins of the Republican Party apparatus. Trump plans on running the RNC the same way he runs his businesses. As such, plans are underway to change the name of party Headquarters to Trump HQ and a team of lawyers is already preparing the party’s chapter 11 paperwork.
Trump also made a transition tonight from the Billy Mays of border walls (Hi, Donald Trump here for the amazing Mexican-Repellant Wall…built and paid for by Mexicans!) to a sort of apocalyptic Paul Revere of the 21st century: “rapists and terrorists and other brown people are coming!”
Trump’s speech on a fear scale ranked somewhere between The Shining at the low end and, well, Republican speeches at conventions at the high end. He was able, nonetheless to not cross the line from fear mongering into full- fledged frothing at the mouth lunacy.
Trump’s formal nomination comes one night after former rival Ted Cruz got delegates hopes up for party unity, then failed to deliver — opting instead to take the highly controversial approach of encouraging people to go out and vote their conscience. Riots nearly ensued. The party of personal freedom apparently loathes the idea of going out and doing as you see fit.
We don’t have the time, space nor interest in going into great details of Cruz’s speech, but we can release a reasonably accurate synopsis here: “Good evening. Hello delegates, thank you for having Heidi and me here. God bless Cleveland and God bless every one of you. Remember to vote your conscience. Fuck You. Oh, and I’m running in 2020 — so come to my hospitality suite. God bless America. Goodnight.”
The other big takeaway from last night was the realization that most Americans had — that the Republicans could have nominated just about anyone else and they’d be better than Trump. Well, anyone, except perhaps this woman:
Note: You needn’t watch the video above in its entirety, but we recommend watching at least the first 45 seconds. The woman, Michelle Van Etten, was given a prime time slot and was described by the RNC as an entrepreneur who employs 100,000 people. They later clarified — she actually employs zero people. The RNC didn’t apologize for the error, but blamed “Meredith McIver.”
But that is enough about Ted Cruz and last night. We don’t want to step on the big story of tonight — that job usually falls to the Trump campaign.
The theme for the convention at large seemed to be less about Trump’s “positive” attributes and more about Hillary Clinton’s unfitness for the Presidency, as evidenced by the mock trial led by Chris Christie.
In contrast, the theme for the closing night was uniting America and making sure that the nation becomes united, rather than pitching one race or class against another. To achieve this, Trump dispatched many of his surrogates, campaign leaders and top Republicans to hit the airwaves, talk to delegates and to reach out to diverse communities across the country.
Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus (pronounced doo-fus nerdlinger)also addressed the GOP convention tonight as sort of a swan song to his chairmanship. The capstone to his chairmanship is this convention, the nomination of Donald Trump as the best, brightest and most capable member of his party to seek the highest office in the land. Trump’s ascendancy to leader of the Republican Party comes 2 years after the party published it’s autopsy and prescription for success, which called for softer language, less divisiveness and greater outreach to African Americans. The results speak for themselves.
And last but not least, the star of the night, the keynote speaker, the face, voice and conscience of the Republican Party, Donald J. Trump, took the stage as the nominee at 10:17 pm and began lying at 10:17:24 when he said “I humbly and gratefully accept your nomination…”
From there the message of the Trump speech was “be afraid, be very, very afraid. Bigly.” with dollops of thinly veiled racism and nationalism thrown in to feed the base and insure the party is united.
In a move reminiscent of failed 2012 nominee Mitt Romney, Trump appeared to call for self-deportation (though in this case, of himself), by saying “anyone who endorses violence, hatred or oppression is not welcome in our country and never, ever will be.”
Republicans, desperate to emerge from this chapter of their history with a modicum (good one, right @KatyTurNBC ?) of dignity, breathed a huge sigh of relief that Trump, in their minds, looked presidential — which is to say that he didn’t talk about his daughter’s rack or use the n-word.
In other Republican Party news, big changes are underfoot at the RNC Communications subsidiary*, Fox “News.” It was announced today that longtime Fox Chairman Roger Ailes (Motto: I put the foxes in Fox News!” has officially resigned as the result of numerous sexual harassment (pronounced, inexplicably, harris-mint) allegations coming to light.
Ailes has long been famous for his rapier wit. Unfortunately, we now know this was not “rapier” as in razor sharp, but “rapier” as in “rapier than everyone except Bill Cosby.”
Even though he stepped down, it did not seem clear that Ailes understood the nature or seriousness of the allegations against him. When lawyers for the plaintiffs were stating their case against him, they offered to show him their briefs. Ailes responded in kind, immediately dropping trou, saying “I thought you’d never ask, doll,” before being escorted out of the building.
And thus this week saw the end of en error at Fox News. More importantly it was the end of the convention, the end of the GOP and quite possibly, the end of the republic.
Stay tuned next week when we will have analysis of Hillary Clinton’s completely unexpected pick of Senator Tim Kaine (pronounced tom vil-sack…see what we did there?) as her vice presidential running mate and the Democratic Party’s national convention.
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