Two observations on the convention’s first day:
(1) There’s not as much dissension in this 41st Republican National Convention as some accounts suggest. Yes, there are certainly people unhappy with the way the convention managers squashed the move for a roll call vote on the Rules Committee report. They might have allowed a roll call vote, which would have produced some afternoon footage of delegation chairmen making anti-Trump mini-speeches. And while Paul Manafort’s operation was adept at getting a sufficient number of signers of petitions to force a roll call to withdraw their signatures, the execution on the podium was ragged. “I wouldn’t have walked away from the podium,” 2008 Republican National Chairman Mike Duncan told me, as presiding officer Arkansas Rep. Steve Womack did. And in an out-in-the-hall interview, Womack, who is often called on to preside over the House on difficult roll calls, told me that organizers made “a tactical mistake” by not instructing him to announce when the motion first came up that enough signatures had been withdrawn to void the demand for a roll call. Only after he ruled that the ayes had prevailed in a voice vote (which seemed to me, sitting high in the gallery, to be correct) and recognized Utah Sen. Mike Lee who demanded a roll call, did he decide on his own to announce that the RNC secretary had ruled that there weren’t enough signatures to demand a roll call.
But the anger of those who were defeated struck me as minimal compared to the strife between Jimmy Carter and Edward Kennedy supporters at the 1980 Democratic National Convention. Veteran conservative Virginia leader Morton Blackwell was telling one and all, including me, that the rules vote was “the most disgusting display of parliamentary produced I’ve seen in the 14 Republican National Conventions I’ve attended since 1964.” But as I told him, he’s never attended a Democratic National Convention. Ken Cuccinelli, the former Virginia Attorney General who protested angrily during the afternoon, was seated on an aisle to floor. He still disagreed, but in measured but not furious tones.
(2) If there was less dissension than has been portrayed, there was still plenty of raggedness to the proceedings. As the mother of Sean Smith, who was killed in Benghazi, blamed Hillary Clinton for his death, I wondered whether her obviously heartfelt words might have been over the top for some voters, and I had similar reactions to some of the other speakers. Rudy Giuliani’s effective stemwinder was properly scheduled for the 10 p.m. ET maximum viewership time bloc, but the apparent plagiarism in Melania Trump’s well delivered speech, while exaggerated by the media, was an unforced error by the Trump speechwriting apparat. General Michael Flynn, speaking just afterward, had a tough act to follow, and the audience started thinning out, leaving few in the hall afterwards. And why was Sen. Joni Ernst speaking after 11 p.m.? Over the last 25 years national convention managers have striven to end every session promptly at 11 p.m., because the old convention networks’ affiliates go to local news in the Eastern and Central time zones at that time. Maybe the Trump folks figured that more people are watching on cable these days. Even so, this was odd.
Even odder to this longtime convention attender was the fact that the spectators gallery, the seats in the stands immediately opposite the podium, were largely empty. Such seats at both parties’ conventions are usually filled with big contributors, and the Trump campaign doesn’t have many. But couldn’t they have gotten someone to sit there? Maybe they will tonight.
One other odd thing. The aisles on the convention floor were almost empty, something that I’ve seen in afternoon but never in evening convention sessions. Maybe that’s because press people are sitting up in their stands monitoring their Twitter feeds rather than getting down on the floor and interviewing the delegates and politicians who are accessible in abdundance there. Do reporters dislike talking to Trump supporters? The only jam was around the family box where the 93-year-old Bob Dole was sitting, one of only two former Republican nominees (the other being Paul Ryan) present at the proceedings. But even there the crush was easy to get through, and there was no need to push and shove any place else on the floor. Weird. We’ll see if that continues to be the case in later sessions.
