In most election years, you can count on at least a few pundits to lament that all the time, effort, and expense of the party conventions is for little purpose other than airing a four-night-long advertisement for the nominee, an endless recitation of already-tired talking points issued to drunken delegates while journalists prowl the hall in a fruitless effort to find some interesting news to report. But not this year! The Democratic convention in Philadelphia may turn out that way, but the Republican gathering in Cleveland promises to be as much of an angry, chaotic mess as the campaign of the man the delegates will raise up. It should be great fun, provided no one actually gets killed. Which isn't out of the realm of possibility.
Republicans will insist that it's all going according to plan, and any other impression you might have could only be the fault of a biased media eagerly seeking out any signs of discontent and division in Cleveland. In a small way, they'll be right the assembled media will indeed highlight all the unrest they can find. What Republicans are wrong about is their belief that this will happen because of liberal media bias. The truth is that discontent and division contain the essential foundation of any good story: conflict. The typical convention is desperately short on conflict, as people in funny hats cheer for a nominee everyone agrees is a super guy. But if you've got people fighting each other, you have a much more interesting story.
The other problem with the Republican complaint is that the party really is divided. We still don't know how many Republican voters will defect come November, but at the elite level-and the convention is when a bunch of elites get together, even if most of them claim to be anything but-there's enough dissatisfaction to feed four days of coverage. As John Ward wrote on Saturday, "A few thousand members of the Republican Party will gather over the next few days for an event ostensibly devoted to celebrating a man whom large numbers of them don't like and didn't support for most of the primary process."
Which is why so many Republican officeholders are refusing to show up at the convention. None of the party's rising minority stars-like Nikki Haley, Brian Sandoval, Tim Scott, and Susana Martinez-will be speaking at the convention. They'll have plenty of company from other Republican officeholders and candidates who found urgent appointments elsewhere this week. The Republican governor of the state where it's being held isn't even going to show.
Meanwhile, Politico reported on Sunday that "Speaker Paul Ryan is spending nearly $150,000 next week to run his own political advertising during the week of the Republican convention." While we don't know what the ads will say, I'm pretty sure they won't be stirring tributes to his party's nominee. Instead, they're likely to be aimed at reinforcing Ryan's image as the substantive policy guy of the GOP-in other words, exactly what Trump isn't. The implied message is, "OK, so our nominee is a spectacular jackass, but don't give up on the Republican Party. Ryan 2020!" And he's the official chair of the convention.
That's not to mention whatever brand of chaos erupts outside, where protesters from the left and right are descending on the site. Fortunately, there will be plenty of guns around, since Ohio has an open-carry law allowing you to sling your AR-15 over your shoulder and head down to the convention center.
But don't expect much excitement from the convention stage, unless it comes in the form of pratfalls or an unannounced cameo by Clint Eastwood's chair. The campaign finally released its list of featured speakers on Sunday evening, and it isn't exactly an all-star lineup. First, each night will feature a speech by another Trump-one wife and four kids, including the heretofore invisible Tiffany, fathered during The Donald's brief marriage to Marla Maples. While the little Trumps obviously admire their dad, something tells me America isn't going to warm to Trump because they see his children, who look like they just stepped out of Rich Kids of Instagram, explaining what a great guy he is.
The rest of the program is made up mostly of people who will send you to Google after you ask, "Who?" There's an actress who appears on The Young and the Restless. There's the woman who runs the Trump Winery and someone who works at the Eric Trump Foundation, who I'm sure was in no way given a primetime speaking slot because she's one of the few black people in America with something nice to say about Donald Trump (and I'm also sure that Trump's aides have reiterated to him that under no circumstances should he say about her, "Look at my African-American over there"). There's controversial libertarian tech douche Peter Thiel, and private equity magnate Tom Barrack (get ready for a hilarious joke about his last name!), no doubt there to testify about the business acumen of the man responsible for such American success stories as Trump University and Trump Steaks. And there's Newt Gingrich.
In other words, the GOP is not exactly putting its best foot forward with this convention, at least if its intention is to convince a majority of the American electorate to hand the White House and the executive branch to Donald Trump and the people willing to work for him. But it should be quite a show.
