19th July, 2016
Republican big guns, such as the 2012 candidate Mitt Romney and 2008 candidate Senator McCain, former President George Bush and his sons, George Bush Jnr, Jeb Bush and host Governor John Kasich, were conspicuously absent in Cleveland Ohio as the Republican National Convention began on Monday.
Worse happened at the venue as chaos briefly erupted when some opponents of presumptive U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump stormed out of the room and others chanted in protest at their failure to win a symbolic vote opposing his candidacy. And outside were scores of gun bearing supporters of Trump who defied police order to keep their weapons aways from the venue.
The turmoil inside however threatened efforts by the Trump campaign to show the party had united behind the businessman-turned-politician and distracted from the day’s theme of “Make America Safe Again,” meant to depict Trump as a strong leader capable of shielding the country from violence and Islamist militancy.
The anti-Trump forces wanted to change the party’s nominating rules to allow delegates to support alternative Republican candidates over Trump.
Party leaders held a voice vote, then declared the opponents lacked enough votes. Pandemonium erupted on the floor of the Cleveland basketball arena where Trump is due to be formally nominated this week for the Nov. 8 election.
Many delegates began chanting “Roll Call. Roll Call,” effectively calling for a lengthy process that would allow every state to weigh in. Representative Steve Womack of Arkansas, who was chairing the session, declared there was not enough support for a roll-call vote, drawing a chorus of boos.
Some, including the Colorado delegation, walked off the convention floor saying they had to assess their next steps.
“This is really appalling,” Ken Cuccinelli, a delegate from Virginia who favoured a roll-call vote, told MSNBC afterward. “This is the party of law and order. … If you won’t obey your own rules there is no reason to think you’ll obey any others.”
While delivering a sudden jolt to the highly scripted programme, the anti-Trump forces failed, their rebellion quashed.
The convention then approved the party policy platform and took a scheduled break ahead of a lineup of evening speakers due to include Trump’s wife Melania and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
But the furore, an embarrassment to Trump, put a spotlight on the deep divisions within the party that have emerged over his candidacy. A string of senior Republicans, worried about Trump’s temperament and policies, avoided the convention.
Among the boycotters are Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush aren’t attending. The GOP’s 2008 and 2012 nominees, John McCain and Mitt Romney, are also skipping as are Jeb Bush and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Trump’s primary rivals.
Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka slammed the boycotters, saying they will be left in the dust as the party moves on without them.
‘That’s their choice if they don’t want to be part of the narrative, if they don’t want to be part of the future,’ Ivanka told ABC News’ Lara Spencer today, in an interview set to air on GMA Tuesday.
‘But this really is about a forward-looking moment.My father is an outsider and we went through a very tough primary,’ Trump added. ‘And he emerged from that the winner, but there were certainly ruffled feathers along the way.”