THIS IS UNREAL! Chaos in Cleveland as the RNC cheats and dissent is shouted down!
Turns out NeverTrump DID have the signatures to force a roll-call vote on the rules.
So the Convention secretary hid so that they wouldn't be able to present them.
So the matter went to a voice vote. The Rules Committee report was clearly defeated- but the chair declared it passed anyway (reminiscent of four years ago, when the Democratic delegates clearly defeated an amendment to their platform to insert a mention of God on a voice vote- but the chair, realizing how bad that would look, declared the opposite result).
The RNC later said that three states had withdrawn their support of the petition to force a vote, but refused to say which states they were.
The former Attorney General of Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli, threw his credentials to the floor in disgust and stormed out as the Trumpistas drowned out the protests of the Maquis with a shout of "USA! USA!" that sounded chillingly like "SIEG HEIL! SIEG HEIL!" Meanwhile, Daniel Horowitz reports that the mics of the dissenters were turned off.
— POLITICO (@politico) July 18, 2016
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) said, “I have no idea what’s going on here. It’s surreal. The chair abandoned his post. And there’s a jazz band playing.”
Trump, as Shapiro pointed out, would have won roll call vote. That's the thing. Shapiro believes that the roll call wasn't allowed because the RNC didn't want to have individual delegates have to go on national television and individually commit themselves to Trump.
But I think something else is going on, alluded to in an earlier post: the hobnail boot is so instinctive to the Trump people, so much a part of their nature, that they act the bully even when they don't have to.
And that may very well be their undoing. They seem not to realize that the people whose alienation from Trump they are making complete are people they are going to desperately need in November. At the very time when they should be trying to win the opposition over, they're following their natures and bullying them instead.
And they're doing it on national tv.
These wounds are not going to heal. I predicted long ago that Trump would end up blowing up the Republican party. I can simply see no scenario at this point in which the Trump faction and the rest of the party can remain in the same tent after this. And I predict that it will get worse before the convention is over.
An awful lot of people who were planning to sit the election out- including some who could have been persuaded- are going to end up voting for Hillary this November.
Whatever else happens in Philadelphia, this won't. Hillary may be a lot of things, but she's not a goon.
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