Day 2- The Hillary We Know Executive Committee Member Evangeline Morphos will be at this hopefully all week, if she can stomach the #RNCinCLE that long. This is about Day 2. Have a look and share with your friends, if you dare.
THE MORNING AFTER
Day 2 of My Republican Hangover
By Evangeline Morphos
Well, it looks as if I wasn't the only one yesterday who woke up with a hangover. While, staffers and some interns at the convention were struggling with actual vomiting caused by a spread of the norovirus, the entire Republican establishment and the news media had to put on their rumpled clothes from the night before and assess the damage. Pundits from MSNBC and CNN (and I'm looking at you, David Axelrod) scrambled to walk back their initial glowing praise of Melania's speech in light of the clear evidence that she had cribbed a substantial part of it from Michelle Obama's 2008 Democratic convention appearance. Social media was flooded with wickedly funny memes and comments. What a relief! Most commentators (and Democrats) had restrained themselves from labeling Melania a "bimbo." But—the plagiarism controversy—too luscious to ignore--could be configured as an academic question of intellectual honesty and proper citation. The Trump camp, for its part, sputtered to respond. Campaign manager, Paul Manafort first blamed Hillary Clinton for the mess. By the end of the afternoon, an exhausted campaign collapsed into citing "My Little Pony" as a defense. Sean Spicer told CNN: "Twilight Sparkle from 'My Little Pony' said, 'This is your dream. Anything you can do in your dreams you can do now." (Please—just Google it: "my little pony spicer").
Trump and Melania had fled Cleveland for New York, leaving a meeting with fat cat donors in the lurch. The plagiarism controversy must have been a welcome distraction for the media. Otherwise, commentators would have had to confront the overt ugliness of the previous night's messages. The speakers from the podium Monday night went well beyond ideological issues of the conservative agenda. They spewed messages of racism, xenophobia and the threat of violence. The media and the Republican Party watched helplessly as Trump was nominated Tuesday afternoon. By the time of the roll call—and the official nomination of Donald Trump--television commentators were dangling the tempting possibility of a revolt on the floor. The possibility of a do-over for the Party. Alaska, Washington D.C. and Ohio made some half-hearted attempts to protest the Trump nomination. Gov. John Kasich gave a poignant interview during the roll call and presented a world-that-might-have been view of the proceedings.
But the nomination process moved inexorably along. A brief spark of interest flared when the Alaska delegation demanded a re-vote in the moments before Trump's nomination was to be officially announced by Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan. Ryan was left awkwardly roaming the stage for what is an eternity in television time. By now, Republican officials were walking through their paces on the stage. The few Republican Party leaders who appeared, seemed to be guests trapped in a family wedding they never wanted to attend. Reince Priebus, who had notably been drunk during his appearance at the 2012 convention, seemed all too sober last night. This was really supposed to be Trump's night—an opportunity for his family to shine. He was, after all about to be nominated for the Presidency of the United States, a day —as he himself said he " will never, never forget." The speakers Tuesday night seemed equally vapid or vicious as the ones the night before. Witness after witness came forward to present evidence of Hillary Clinton's criminality. Issues that had already been resolved or that were outright lies were presented a "fresh evidence" in the kangaroo court finally presided over by a bloated Chris Christie. Looking like a Disney cartoon character from the mob scenes in "Beauty and the Beast," he led the crowd in chants of "Guilty!"
This is not our Democratic/democratic nation.
Even more bizarre accusations came from the somnambulant Ben Carson who suggested that Hillary Clinton was in league with Lucifer. Carson linked Hillary's influence by Satan to a metaphoric mention of Lucifer in a book written by Saul Alinsky, a Chicago political organizer who had been the subject of Hillary's senior thesis at Wellesley. Thank goodness she hadn't written on Milton. Interspersing these attacks were glimpses of Donald Trump, the father. His daughter, Tiffany, cited several examples of Trump's close parenting: he always asked after her family when he called, he wrote comments on her report card, and he phoned her once when she was in crisis. Never mind that her mother recalled in April raising Tiffany, now 22, largely on her own, "Her daddy is a good provider with education and such, but as far as time, it was just me."
Donald Jr. delivered the only political speech of the campaign, exhibiting a rigid conservatism on stage with a nascent version of his father's nastiness off stage. When George W. Bush announced he would be the last Republican President—the Republican Party seemed to be accepting its fate. At least one media outlet seemed to be acutely aware of their complicity in the rise of Donald Trump. While the Trump family paraded on stage as what my friend Annette calls the "anti-von Trapps", the Murdoch family was taking action. The owners of Fox News decided—very deliberately and publicly to ax Roger Ailes. It is remarkable that the Murdochs would fire Ailes at the peak moment of presidential election coverage, and that they would not even allow him a face-saving exit. Ailes had, of course, been the architect of eight years of Obama-bashing and Hillary persecution. Like an overweight Dr. Frankenstein, he kept dead stories alive and created new monsters, like Obama's birth certificate and Benghazi. The so-called feud between Trump and Fox news had brought millions of viewers and hundreds of millions in revenues to Fox News. Donald Trump was Roger Ailes creature. The New York Times estimates to be over 2 billion dollars worth of television time was what fueled the Trump candidacy to victory. Perhaps it's guilt over the Murdoch empire's encouragement of the Brexit that caused the Murdoch family to wake up from their own private hangover and say: "What the hell just happened here."
###July 20, 2016