Unity convention, day one: Paul Manafort takes a shot at Ohio Gov. John Kasich — in Cleveland

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Allah:

The key bit comes at 2:20 of the clip. Note the unhappy murmuring from the hometown crowd when he claims Kasich is “embarrassing his state” by skipping the convention. You could understand this sort of dumb bravado coming from Trump, who sees every snub that goes unpunished as proof of weakness, but Manafort’s supposed to be the cool-headed strategist with his eye on the big picture. He’s the guy who wanted Pence as VP because Pence would make it easier for the party to unify. If ever there was a moment to take the high road and offer some strategic lip service this was it. “Listen,” he could have said, “I admire John Kasich. He ran a good campaign and he’s an important voice in the party. If he’s willing to speak this week, we’d make it a priority to clear time for him.” Best-case scenario: Kasich hears that and decides to suck it up and attend. Worst-case scenario: Kasich continues to boycott but ends up looking small and petty by doing so.

Making this even odder, Manafort needs the Ohio GOP’s help in building a ground game in their must-win state. Trump barely has a functioning campaign right now. Ohio Republicans can fill the void. So naturally the smart thing to do is gratuitously annoy them.

“All along, we’ve been looking for a more unifying message coming from the Trump campaign,” [Ohio GOP Chairman Matt] Borges added. “And then [Manafort] came to Cleveland this morning as we’re lifting the curtain on one of the crown jewels of the Republican Party and the effort we had in Ohio to bring this convention here, he decided to go in a direction that was obviously calculated — he did it on all the shows — and he’s factually incorrect.”

The remarks from Borges, a top Kasich ally, are significant: Trump is relying heavily on the Ohio GOP’s infrastructure for ground game support, and now tensions are boiling over into the open.

Former Kasich strategist John Weaver took off the gloves on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/JWGOP/status/755014603940265985

https://twitter.com/JWGOP/status/755017055296970752

That’s a reference to Manafort’s lucrative pre-Trump career as an advocate in Washington forsome of the sleaziest tyrants on the planet. Given the new GOP position on Ukraine, he may still be an advocate for them behind the scenes.

His jab at Kasich for “embarrassing” Ohio isn’t his only snub of the convention’s home state this week either. For reasons known only to the Trump brain trust, they decided to move the Ohio delegation on the floor to the side of the stage behind Pennsylvania even though traditionally the home state sits up front:

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Besides having a barely functioning campaign apparatus in Ohio, the Trump campaign apparatus here in Colorado is nearly nonexistent. At this point in 2008 and 2012, the McCain and Romney campaigns respectively, had GOTV efforts in motion and determining where they needed to concentrate their efforts. Though both had failed to carry the state in the GE, Romney ran ahead of the McCain vote totals and won the early voting by a narrow margin. The Bush re-election campaign in 2004 demonstrated what needs to done. The Colorado Bush team called in 2003 asking for your support (vote) and could they count on it 2004. If you want to win Colorado at the precinct, county and state convention levels and the GE, you have to lay your groundwork the year before (which Cruz did). Trump didn’t, and hasn’t yet.

To be only 10 points down (Fox News) here in Colorado, Trump is lucky. However, he needs to get on the stick if he wants to be competitive. Also, his impact down ballot is not a good one. In the US Senate race, incumbent Michael Bennet is +15 over Darryl Glenn, the Republican nominee. The Republican field in the Senate race was very weak to begin with. On the House CD seats, no turnover is expected. The Dems, however, seemed poised to retake full control of the state legislature, and possibly increase their numbers.

Iowa’s and Colorado’s delegations walked out today.
They were part of an 11 state demand that the rules get a floor vote when they failed in committee.
Then 3 of those states dropped this demand, so it was only 8 states.
I only know that Virginia and Utah were two of the 11.
I can’t find out which were all of the 11 or which were the three.
Weird.
So, with only 8 states asking, there were not enough asking so the demand was denied.
I watched an open air set of speeches outside the venue.
The Republican speakers were all wearing bullet-proof vests while police on horseback ringed the area.
And it isn’t even dark yet.

Matt] Borges has some very interesting issues-especially personally. I live in ohio and kasich is an idiot. truly, the dumbest rock in the box. his sexploits are wondrous. the gov’s mansion in columbus, in which he does not live, is utilized on a number of occasions for trysts.
john needs to vanish from the political stage in jan.
by the way, cost of AIII vests have come down. an additional steel plate is roughly $75-$150. the sides and lateral margins of the vest are the weakest and provide the greatest opportunity.

Damn can the news commentators shut the F up so those that are speaking can be heard lord knows Rachel Madcows opinion is so important, Megan Kellys voice so much better…So I tuned into PBS, at least they only interrupted when Hillary or Barry were being slammed too hard for their liberal tastes. A general was speaking and PBS desperately looking for someone to bash Trump found Gov. Scott Walker oh the heartbreak when he said he would indeed stump for Trump along with the republican ticket.

@kitt: C-SPAN went gavel to gavel without commentary at all.

And, with regard to the comment I wrote above:
It was NOT 11 states.
It was only 9.
Then 3 dropped out of their demand for a floor vote.
So, there were only 6 states and that was under the RNC rules for making demands for floor votes.

@Nanny G:

And, with regard to the comment I wrote above:
It was NOT 11 states.
It was only 9.
Then 3 dropped out of their demand for a floor vote.
So, there were only 6 states and that was under the RNC rules for making demands for floor votes.

WRONG!!!. That is the spin the RNC put on it. There were 11 states and they were:

MN, IA, WA, CO, DC, ND, AK, VA, UT, ME, WY

3 pulled out. That left 8 which met the 7 state benchmark.

I was told the Iowa and Colorado delegates walked out. Still trying to see if that is true. Even so, the 7 state benchmark was met and the RNC violated its own rules.

And ask yourself; why was the Secretary hiding behind armed security so that the states couldn’t file their petitions? Ummmmmm????????

Seems Donald Trump doesn’t mind the system being rigged when it’s to his benefit.

@Nanny G: I didn’t even think of cspan, Mslsd was the worst they all were talking over each other in order to make sure the person making the speech could not be heard, they were 2nd choice I thought the Donald channel would control themselves lol wrong…PBS was at least semi polite about allowing the viewers to hear the speeches, but wanted some personal quips from Melania I guess something like when the elastic snapped on Dons silk shorts or such something,to make him seem more human, I thought his wife made a very nice speech.I very much like her concern about education, beats food that kids wont eat all to hell.

#6 –

Colorado delegation indeed walked out.

Regarding the number of states remaining to call for a roll call vote was indeed 8. Both the RNC and the Trump campaign put a whip operation into play and only 3 states dropped out, meeting the minimum and violating their own rules.

Apparently, not many are concerned that Trump is strong-arming his way to the nomination. As I stated in my comment above, Trump is having an effect down ballot here in Colorado – and it’s not in a good direction. Dem registration is running ahead of Rep registration for the first time in over 40 years, and there is concern Colorado may become a “reliable” blue state. There are very serious misgivings about Trump here.

With regard to polling, Colorado is hard to decipher. In 2012, though independents narrowly went for Romney, he still failed to carry the state. Votes cast in the Rep strongholds were not as high as expected.