Analysis: Republican nominee’s campaign has suffered a series of high-profile organizational fiascos at the RNC, most of its own making
CLEVELAND — The Republican National Convention was billed as an event that would show the party unifying behind its presidential nominee. In this vein, Donald Trump’s campaign chair Paul Manafort told reporters Sunday it would be a “Trump convention” and that “the party is united.”
But after a series of embarrassing incidents during the quadrennial confab, hopes of seriously projecting such an image have been crushed.
In one case, the party discord that disrupted the campaign was out of its control. During the first session of convention proceedings Monday, renegade delegates pursued a technical gambit that would change the RNC rules and open the possibility of stripping the nomination from Trump. It failed, but nevertheless demonstrated a fractured GOP yet to repair the wounds from a bitter primary.
Several other debacles, however, have been self-inflicted. For a candidate who regularly touts his managerial skills, these failures reflect a level of organizational dysfunction that runs counter to one of the billionaire’s main selling points.
Most dramatically, Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s non-endorsement speech Wednesday night made the most electrifying moment of the convention a reminder that much of the Republican base refuses to get behind Trump. Amid thunderous boos from the audience, Cruz remained defiant. Instead of formally backing his former rival, he encouraged Americans to “vote your conscience.”
After Cruz’s speech stirred the convention hall, Trump aides told The New York Times they had previously seen the text of the speech, which had included no endorsement, but were hoping Cruz would decide to offer one by the time he was slated to speak.
Trump also tweeted: “Wow, Ted Cruz got booed off the stage, didn’t honor the pledge! I saw his speech two hours early but let him speak anyway. No big deal!” Earlier in the campaign season, Cruz vowed to back the eventual nominee. But on Thursday, Cruz said his promise was “abrogated” after Trump tweeted an unflattering photo of his wife, Heidi, and suggested his father, Rafael, was involved in the John F. Kennedy assassination.
Regardless of what the Trump campaign was thinking in allowing Cruz to speak without the assurance he would endorse the nominee, it made one of the convention’s biggest news stories — if not the biggest — reflect negatively on the party’s newfound standard-bearer.
Another episode was on Monday evening, when Trump’s wife Melania was caught lifting passages from Michelle Obama’s speech at her husband’s 2008 Democratic National Convention. Immediately upon the discovery of the plagiarized prose, the campaign was sharply criticized for its lack of scrutiny of the text.
It took the campaign two days to offer an explanation. The Trump campaign on Wednesday released a statement in which Melania’s speechwriter, Meredith McIver, took the blame and described the drafting process of the native Slovenian’s address.
“A person she has always liked is Michelle Obama,” McIver said. “Over the phone, she read me some passages from Mrs. Obama’s speech as examples. I wrote them down and later included some of the phrasing in the draft that ultimately became the final speech.”
Pundits repeatedly stressed that Trump’s error here stemmed not from the mishap itself, but from his failure to properly address it right away, extending the news cycle on the gaffe and undermining the message his campaign was trying to convey.
One more episode happened just before the convention. After announcing Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate, the campaign unveiled its campaign logo — which subsequently drew quite a bit of unwanted attention. The graphic showed an interlocking T and P that many social media users noted looked like an image of sexual penetration.
The next day, the campaign sent out a modified version that was just an inscription of “Trump” atop “Pence” with the slogan, “Make America Great Again!” emblazoned underneath.
For Trump, the ultimate showman, these controversies have made it increasingly difficult to remain on script and unify the party. Ahead of his convention address Thursday night, the bar was high. In his speech, Trump has to try to rebrand a candidacy that the past few days have shown to be floundering.
As reported by The Times of Israel