Allah:
I hope it happens, not because it would embarrass Trump but because it’d be amusing to watch the RNC scramble to fix the “optics” of empty seats. Would they actually start hiring seat-fillers? Supposedly only delegates are allowed to sit in the delegate sections on the floor, but if Trumpism means anything, it means breaking the rules if they get in the way of what makes the great man happy.
They’re not threatening this as a true protest — or at least, they weren’t before the Rules fiascothis afternoon — but rather as leverage to secure a few rule changes from the RNC for the 2020 primaries. If the party agrees to tilt the board a bit towards conservative candidates (i.e. Ted Cruz) then Cruz’s delegates will be good boys and girls this week. If this were a true protest and they really wanted to screw Trump, they wouldn’t telegraph it. They’d show up for his acceptance speech on Thursday and then leave en masse five minutes into it.
[Pro-Cruz] forces want to revise the rules that will reward states with closed primaries — and for the RNC and Trump camp to allow Cruz’s name to be placed in nomination from the convention floor…
From their end, the Cruz forces have the power to somewhat disrupt the convention over the first two days – albeit with little power to affect the ultimate outcome of Trump receiving the nomination. One threat the Cruz forces are said to be holding over the heads of the RNC and the Trump campaign is the specter of a large group of delegates – in the hundreds – simply leaving town after Cruz speaks on Wednesday night, exposing the nominee to the prospect of televised images of empty seats in the Quicken Loans Arena. It’s an open question whether there are enough alternate delegates who can be rallied to fill such a number of seats…
A source close to Cruz tells Fox News that the key sticking point is Cruz’s speaking slot and specifically the content of his speech. The original agreement between team Trump and team Cruz allowed Cruz to speak without offering a formal endorsement of Trump. So far, Trump’s folks have not asked to look at the speech.
The deal being offered, supposedly, is that Cruz’s backers will behave themselves if Cruz’s name is placed in nomination as symbolic recognition of his second-place finish and the party agrees to award more delegates to closed primaries in 2020 (which would make it harder for a centrist candidate like Trump to win by attracting independents and Democrats). Cruz himself may be asked to formally agree to some sort of “unity pledge,” which presumably would fall short of an outright endorsement. Remember, Cruz is trying to walk a line this week between implicitlyendorsing Trump, which is what his speaking at the convention signals, without explicitlyendorsing him. He doesn’t want to let the E-word escape his lips or else he won’t be able to boast during the 2020 primaries, “I stayed true to conservatism and never endorsed the pretender Trump.” But he also wants to make some gesture of loyalty towards Trump so that, if he wins the nomination in 2020, he can turn around and say to all the anti-Cruzers, “I was a good soldier for the last nominee, wasn’t I?” If Trump demands that he agree to a “unity pledge,” it’ll probably be finessed in lawyerly fashion so that it says that defeating Hillary Clinton is the highest priority this year without specifically saying that voting for Trump is the way to do it. All of this is too clever by half, as is often the case with Cruz’s strategic gambits, but he understands that would-be Cruz voters don’t need a convincing excuse to justify his decision to give a speech this week. All they need is some excuse, some fig leaf that’ll ease their conscience when they’re leaning towards him in 2020 but searching for some reason to give him a pass for what he’s doing now. “I never said the E-word” is the fig leaf.
Oh, here’s something else from the Fox piece quoted above. What does this mean? “Push back” when Trump’s “interests” are “threatened”?
On the Trump side, Republican consultant and Trump adviser Roger Stone is said to have mobilized a group of 1,000 people to push back wherever his candidate’s interests are being threatened.
Stone, I’d guess, would say that’s a reference to protesters, nothing more. If anti-Trump groups show up outside the arena and start getting media coverage, pro-Trumpers will show up with their signs too to remind reporters that there are people on both sides. But Stone has had more ambitious plans for “pushback” in the past: He was the guy who infamously suggested having Trump fans visit the hotel rooms of delegates who refused to vote for Trump when Cruz was still in the race and it looked like he might force a second ballot. Putting this detail in a story about pro-Cruz delegates embarrassing Trump with a walkout suggests that Fox thinks the “pushback” might involve trying to intimidate them too. Does Trump have his own gang now? Will Mike Lee, Ken Cuccinelli, and the other anti-Trumpers who tried to revolt today be getting a visit from it?
Why dont they just pout and do like what the demabrats did and sit on their little fannies if their going to act like adolecent little brats
http://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president
Scan down through all 50 states.
Cruz got so few votes.
Often he got less than 50% of Trump’s vote.
Sometimes less than 10% of it!
On only a few occasions did he win a state.
At what point did he ”prove” he could gain enough moderate and/or crossover votes to be viable?
Never.
I wanted to like Cruz, but through the course of the primaries; I changed my mind. The real change came when I saw him make a bald faced lie on Fox news with Bret Baier. Cruz was saying one thing, denying he ever said anything like that, what the media reported was not true…… Baier then confronted him with a video showing he was lying. Cruz stuttered, didn’t have a response and just looked flustered (just like a kid caught in a lie) and then deflected the question with the usual BS. Well. Trump is right. He is Lyin’ Ted Cruze. He hasn’t risen to the level of Hillary’s talent for untruth. I have no problem with a politician changing his mind on an issue, not to pander, but for stated specific reasons, just Don’t Lie!
Then there were the dirty tactics against Carson. You can’t find a more honorable man than Ben Carson. He is a brilliant man. His endorsement of Trump meant a whole lot more to me than all the other politicians who do not.
His so-called great oratory skills make him sound like a preacher. I am a Christian and it really bothered me personally and it was sure bet it would turn off secular America.
So all those hypocrites who insisted Trump make the pledge to remain in and support the Republican Party establishment and now want to bring him down, are just the DC establishment that need to be thrown out of office on their asses.
So the Cruz disrupters, the devious Cruz strategy in what he says at the convention increases my dislike of the man who views himself as the Mr. Conservative savior of America. If he had embraced Trump after he lost or at least found some common ground for support, he might have had a shot at the Supreme Court, or a Cabinet position, even a shot at the Whitehouse in the future. He is young. Now he just wants to be the spoiler who can still preen his feathers with his convention speech.
We need not scare off conservative, fed up Democrats and Independents who I think will vote for Trump. There were many chaotic political conventions in the past. The Democratic party prior to the Civil War was one of the worst. They could not agree on a platform, let alone a candidate. They held 2 simultaneously and elected 2 different candidates.
Why does a divided party matter now more than the past? The main stream media will use it against Trump. It will happen instantly and repeatedly with 24 hr news. I woke up to the accusations of plagiarism in Melania’s impressive speech.
One more thing. Republicans again shot themselves in the foot with it’s stance against gay marriage. It is a done deal with America. Let them end up in divorce court, fighting over child custody and assets just like the rest of us. It’s a good time to be a divorce attorney.
Just call me disgusted with politics again this morning.
I will say it again, and whoever wants to name call, so be it. When they started digging into cruz’ background, he sealed his records. If you have nothing to hide, you don’t seal them. I believe there is a real question as to whether he is a US citizen.
He did show that he renounced his Canadian citizenship. So what? That is not what is important. If I were a betting woman, I would bet that he figured obama got away with it, so could he.
I am sick of the establishment. I am sick and tired of American citizens being used as ATMs. I am sick and tired of American citizens being placed third, fourth and below people who care nothing about this country except what they can get for ‘free’. Enough is enough.
@Songbird:
Cruz was one of the candidates I too supported until I learned that he still retained Canadian and Cuban citizenship. The whole reason for the “Natural Born” clause (in addition to the “no titles of nobility” clause’) are so to minimize the possibility that a President will not have a conflict of loyalties and interests and favor of another nation over the US. Cruz could and should have legally filed the papers renouncing Cuban and Canadian citizenship prior to running for president, but he chose not to (and still hasn’t).
I’ve never much liked Ted Cruz’s views, but I’ll give him this: Ted Cruz did not sell out. That’s far more than a lot of elected republicans can say at this point.
@Greg:
Especially Barak Obozo.
I doubt a few empty seats would be noticed, they’d probably be outside the perimeter where the 450,000 bikers are.