Republicans spent the opening day of their national convention in Cleveland settling scores, whipping up resentment, playing to fears, and appealing to the party base with heavy attacks on Hillary Clinton. Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani hysterically led the way, claiming, “the vast majority of Americans don’t feel safe” to chants of “lock Hillary up”.
The opening day of the Republican National Convention provided as much evidence as anyone needs that a party in search of unity has but one real path to get there: attacking Hillary Clinton....There was little from anyone other than Trump’s wife, Melania, that offered a soft portrait of the presumptive nominee and suggested a party united and looking to expand its coalition. Instead, the focus on Clinton was used as a way to bind the GOP’s base.”
Donald Trump sauntered on stage in a cloud of dry ice to declare: “We are going to win so big”, before introducing his wife, Melania Trump.
But the presumptive nominee’s campaign was immediately subject to accusations of plagiarism after passages from an address by Melania Trump were found to be strikingly similar to passages from a speech Michelle Obama gave to the 2008 Democratic convention. Mrs Trump said she had had as little help as possible drafting the speech but the episode has left Trump’s campaign open to accusations of carelessness and disorganisation.
Calling this “amateur hour” – while accurate – doesn’t quite do justice to what a debacle this has quickly become for the Trump campaign. It is the dominant storyline out of the first night of the convention and threatens to swamp day two.
Basic vetting would have set off alarm bells. This is the kind of rookie mistake that a serious congressional campaign would never make.
Calling this “amateur hour” – while accurate – doesn’t quite do justice to what a debacle this has quickly become for the Trump campaign. It is the dominant storyline out of the first night of the convention and threatens to swamp day two.
Basic vetting would have set off alarm bells. This is the kind of rookie mistake that a serious congressional campaign would never make.
-- Making matters worse: Some people who are close to Trump are being hyper defiant while others are criticizing the still unknown staffer who is responsible.
On Tuesday morning, Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort called accusations of plagiarism “just absurd” and told CNN “there’s no cribbing of Michelle Obama’s speech”.
Meanwhile, Chris Christie on the “Today” show said it is not plagiarism because “93 percent of the speech is completely different from Michelle Obama’s speech.”- “I wrote it,” Melania claimed in an interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer last night just before delivering her speech, “with (as) little help as possible.”
Melania Trump: From Small-Town Slovenia to Doorstep of White House, from the New York Times’ Jason Horowitz
“...interviews with her former classmates, friends of her family and others who knew them during her youth in Slovenia suggest that her transformation owes less to chance than to the Knavs family’s determination to seize openings and avoid getting stuck. Her father, a larger-than-life personality who reminds her childhood friends of Mr. Trump, belonged to the Communist Party, an exclusive club whose members sometimes joined because of career ambitions as much as ideology. Her mother, an industrious and striking woman, went from harvesting red onions on her family’s farm to a career in the town’s textile factory. She always found time to make sure her two daughters dressed to impress, sewing clothes for them after her work shift ended.”
Andrew Sullivan summing up the first night of the GOP convention:
"Just mulling over the events tonight, there’s one obvious stand-out. I didn’t hear any specific policy proposals to tackle clearly stated public problems. It is almost as if governing, for the Republican right, is fundamentally about an attitude, rather than about experience or practicality or reasoning. The degeneracy of conservatism – its descent into literally mindless appeals to tribalism and fear and hatred – was on full display. You might also say the same about the religious right, the members of whom have eagerly embraced a racist, a nativist, a believer in war crimes, and a lover of the tyrants that conservatism once defined itself against. Their movement long lost any claim to a serious Christian conscience. But that they would so readily embrace such an unreconstructed pagan is indeed a revelation.
"If you think of the conservative movement as beginning in 1964 and climaxing in the 1990s, then the era we are now in is suffering from a cancer of the mind and the soul. That the GOP has finally found a creature that can personify these urges to purge, a man for whom the word 'shameless' could have been invented, a bully and a creep, a liar and cheat, a con man and wannabe tyrant, a dedicated loather of individual liberty, and an opponent of the pricelessly important conventions of liberal democracy is perhaps a fitting end.
"This is the gutter, ladies and gentlemen, and it runs into a sewer. May what’s left of conservatism be carried out to sea."
"If you think of the conservative movement as beginning in 1964 and climaxing in the 1990s, then the era we are now in is suffering from a cancer of the mind and the soul. That the GOP has finally found a creature that can personify these urges to purge, a man for whom the word 'shameless' could have been invented, a bully and a creep, a liar and cheat, a con man and wannabe tyrant, a dedicated loather of individual liberty, and an opponent of the pricelessly important conventions of liberal democracy is perhaps a fitting end.
"This is the gutter, ladies and gentlemen, and it runs into a sewer. May what’s left of conservatism be carried out to sea."