IN THE run-up to the Republican National Convention, held in Cleveland between July 18th and 21st, Donald Trump lamented that its predecessor, in 2012, was “the single most boring convention I’ve ever seen”. As the party’s prospective nominee, he planned to prevent a repeat of that tedium, mainly by injecting “some show-biz” into the proceedings. On the evidence of the convention’s first three days, Mr Trump triumphed. The convention was one of America’s strangest and most compelling political set-pieces in decades. This was notwithstanding the C-grade celebrities, including a star of the reality television show “Duck Dynasty”, a golfer and a martial-arts impresario, whom Mr Trump wheeled out to praise him.
Proceedings at the Quicken Loans Arena plunged between perplexing inanity (to which the celebrities did contribute), shambles, and sometimes rowdy conflict among the almost 2,500 Republican delegates gathered to nominate Mr Trump. Little went according to plan. Entertainment aside, Mr Trump needed three things from the convention. He needed to impose a measure of unity on his divided party. He needed to project a sense that he...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/2aeFIhL
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