Welcome to the Republican Convention and Trump World. Melania lied (she claimed to have written the speech, now a low level staffer as expected is taking the fall, which in itself makes little sense; more to come.) The campaign lied, claiming for days it was not plagiarism knowing it was. The candidate lies daily. The media pretends it doesn’t happen, and moves to the next story, but this whole episode is insane.
Much more to come on the Ted Cruz non-endorsement. This is Rockefeller-Goldwater, folks. A very big deal.
Brian Beutler:
The Racial Motivation for Putting Hillary in Prison
Clinton is blocking a return to white entitlement. Republicans can't stand it.
Before an intrepid internet sleuth noticed that Melania Trump, or whoever wrote her speech, had lifted multiple paragraphs from Michelle Obama’s 2008 convention speech—paragraphs extolling the value of hard work and importance of words, ironically�—the storyline coming out of the Republican National Convention was much darker and more ominous.
Night one pulsed with a ghastly undercurrent. The theme was nominally “Make America Safe Again,” as if the country has recently been beset by new, existential dangers. But to anyone watching, the subtext was clear: Elect Donald Trump or minorities will come to kill you.
The hum of death and crime harmonized at times with a cathartic certainty that Hillary Clinton should be in prison. The crowd repeatedly broke into chants of “lock her up,” and on a few occasions attendees were egged on by speakers on stage—including former Army General Michael Flynn, one of Trump’s VP finalists—which made the view all but indistinguishable from official party doctrine. For all the appeals to fear, the only thing under any real threat was the party norm against inciting vigilantism against political opponents.
NBC:
Donald Trump's running-mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, is not very well known to American voters, according to a recent NBC News|SurveyMonkey poll.
Most voters do not know enough about Pence to even say whether they have a favorable or unfavorable impression of him—just under half (48 percent) said they don't know enough to have an opinion. About a quarter have a favorable impression of Pence, according to results from the poll, conducted online from July 15 through July 18, 2016.
We know who he is. He introduced himself last night, but there is plenty of time for the Clinton camp to define him to America. You don’t have to know what the letters RFRA mean to know what it stands for (hatred and bigotry).
Anyone remember issues? WaPo asked about some.
The poll asked what position Americans want the next president to take on immigration, abortion, gun laws and trade agreements, and found a greater share of the public endorsing Democrats' position on three issues. Sixty-percent of adults want the next president to support a path to legal status for undocumented immigrants, 52 percent want a president who supports legal abortion in most cases, and 57 percent want a president who supports stricter gun laws, all roughly in line with recent polling.
The ABC News version:
Views on Experience vs. Outsider Status Pose a Potential Challenge for Trump (POLL)
Americans prefer experience to outsider status in the next president and also give it a higher priority in an ABC News/Washington Post poll, a potential challenge for Donald Trump as he builds toward the general election campaign.
The public by 55-41 percent prefers a president with “experience in how the political system works” over “someone from outside the existing political establishment.” Most Democrats want experience, while independents are split and most Republicans prefer an outsider.
Well, they finally threw someone under the bus for plagiarism after the campaign lied abut it not being plagiarism. Three day story right in the middle of the four day convention.
Brilliant.
So how important is this plagiarism thing? Nate Cohn gets at it:
Nate [Cohn] It’s astonishing. It feels like they just can’t seem to do anything right. Vice-presidential rollouts and spouses’ speeches at the convention are layups, and they missed the first one and wound up with a foul on the second.
And, you know, I’m not of the view that any of these things “matter” all that much. But there are only so many moments in a presidential campaign when you get opportunities like this: the VP rollout, the convention and the debates. Trump is a clear underdog, and he’s forfeiting some of the few moments on the calendar that afford him a natural opportunity to improve his standing.
Paul Waldman:
And as Jared Yates Sexton has reported, cries of "Hang that bitch!" have become common at Trump events.
That particular cry wasn't heard from the convention floor, but "Lock her up!" was everywhere. While the headliner of the convention's second night was supposed to be Donald Trump, Jr., the speech we should and will remember came from Chris Christie. The former prosecutor presented his speech as a series of indictments, where he accused Clinton of all manner of betrayals and misdeeds, each one followed by asking the crowd, "Is she guilty or not guilty?", at which the lusty cry "Guilty!" reverberated through the hall. In an evening featuring long stretches in which a sleepy crowd offered tepid applause for some boring politician while waiting for the good stuff, Christie's speech was the one that stood out. It captured all the passion and excitement of a good old-fashioned witch trial; all that was missing was the climax where the demonic harpy is set aflame...
The weird thing is, the person among them who hates Clinton the least may be Donald Trump himself. Before he started running for president, he called Clinton a friend and sang her praises to the media. But just as he intuited that the path to victory lay not in the purest expression of conservative ideology or the assemblage of concrete policy plans but in a campaign of angry white nationalism, he realized that loathing for Clinton was a powerful force just begging to be unleashed.
And unleashed it most certainly is. The question now is how much farther it will go.
Aaron Blake:
Just to recap, here we are at the convention of one of two major political parties in the United States of America, with the devotees of one party calling for the jailing of what amounts to the opposition leader…
This week, though, the Republican Party has conducted a rather quick trial and reached a verdict. The sentencing was done by acclamation. It's Donald Trump's Republican Party now.
Alexandra Petri:
Another day of the GOP convention, another night of terror
The second night of the GOP convention was like “1984,” periodically interrupted by infomercials for Trump wines. The evening started with an uncomfortable explanation of why the rules obliged Alaska to vote for Donald Trump and went downhill from there.
Supposedly the theme of the second night in Cleveland was “Make America Work Again.” Those were the words displayed behind the stage. That was what was announced. But judging by the speeches, the actual theme was “Make America Salem Again.” Or, “Don’t Worry! Hillary Clinton literally worships Lucifer, but on the bright side, Donald Trump’s winery makes excellent wine and his children love him!”
Jonathan Chait:
The Republicans’ Economy Night Turns Out to Be Another Lock-Up-Hillary Night
Donald Trump, as we all know by now, understood the Republican Party’s voters better than the Republican elites did. But he also understood the Republican elites themselves. Several months ago, it seemed that Trump was so wild, so ignorant, so authoritarian, racist, sexist, and heretical to conservative doctrine that the party’s Establishment could never accept him. But Trump understood that if he did win the nomination, Republican leaders would be cynical enough to submit to his leadership. (Perhaps because Trump himself has the most cynical possible assumptions about human nature in general.) In Trump’s world, there are no principles, only deals.
The promised theme of day two of the Republican National Convention was “the economy.” Along with his promise to approve Republican judges, the economy is a major part of the reason Republican leaders have decided to endorse their nominee. Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan delivered speeches pointing out that the nominee would sign their bills and advance their agenda, which is enough enticement for them to accept the long-term brand damage Trump inflicts upon the party, not to mention the possibility that he might win and destroy the rule of law.
Jonah Goldberg is not thinking things are going great:
That’s the original purpose of conventions: to find the candidate the party could unify around. Since the rise of the modern primary system, we switched to the practice of putting it all up for a vote. Whoever gets a majority of delegates in primary elections is the nominee. This wasn’t a problem most years because all of the candidates were ultimately acceptable to the party. People grumbled about this or that candidate (I certainly did), but there was no #NeverDole or #NeverRomney movement.
This time is different. Countless leading Republicans skipped this convention, including all of the living previous nominees, save for Bob Dole. Most delegates in attendance have made their peace with Donald Trump, but a very large number have not. The Trump boosters think this is all sour grapes, and that’s an understandable reaction. What they can’t (or won’t) see is that Trump is viewed by many conservatives as an imposter and hijacker.
The Trump campaign tried to fix this problem by selecting Indiana governor Mike Pence as his running mate, but Trump stomped on that message by fumbling his announcement and then, in a joint interview with 60 Minutes, treating Pence like a glorified intern. The message for many conservatives wasn’t that Trump was embracing conservatism, but that he was willing to condescend to it.
Lucia Graves:
Jill Harth, woman who sued Trump over alleged sexual assault, breaks silence
Harth stands by claims of incident described in 1997 lawsuit as ‘attempted rape’ and wants apology from Trump: ‘Don’t call me a liar’