Cleveland’s convention of shame

By Kevin Rennie

The Hartford Courant

Republican delegates, alternates and assorted party activists have gathered in Cleveland to nominate Donald Trump for president and write their names in history’s book of shame. It will be a good week to experiment with the 21st-century phenomenon of cutting the cord by avoiding television and fleeing cyberspace.

It’s part of my job to watch these horrors, but other sensible people need not torture themselves. How are the Republicans going to fill four nights of programming?

Prime-time speaking spots are usually in demand among party luminaries and aspiring stars. Four years ago in Tampa, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio delighted audiences with their optimistic messages and upbeat delivery. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made the powerful case for the United States as the world’s greatest force for the defense and enlargement of the blessings of freedom.

The schedule of speakers this week features many Trumps. If the speakers are handed speeches that reflect the candidate’s personality, each day will feature alternating blasts of reverence for Trump and ugly attacks on his perceived detractors.

So many topics are no-go zones for all those angry delegates. Many would probably be satisfied spending four days shaking their fists and howling into the ether. They cannot talk about education. Any mention of that will bring comparisons with their candidate’s ugly, eponymous Trump University. We won’t hear that mentioned, nor is any speaker likely to do the decent thing and offer an apology to Gonzalo Curiel, the Indiana-born judge presiding over the action against Trump for that school scam.

ANY BRAVE SPEAKER?

What brave speaker will try to put some distance between millions of Republicans and Trump’s poison? Will someone step forward and dare to condemn genocidal Saddam Hussein? Trump recently uttered some nutty admiring words for Saddam’s brutal treatment of dissidents or anyone suspected of being a threat to his totalitarian regime. Is there no one left who will condemn Trump’s eye for the dance with dictators?

Will anyone pay a moment of honor to John McCain? Will there be a Republican in Cleveland with the character to mention that McCain’s seven years in a North Vietnamese prison make him an American hero? Is there just one?

The garnish to the main course of feeding Trump’s narcissism for four days will be attacks on Democrat Hillary Clinton. In a normal year, the Republicans would be able to launch unfettered attacks on the devious Democrat. What a dark gift she gave opponents by using her home server for sensitive business and giving many variations on her explanations of it for more than a year. Against a responsible Republican nominee who displayed a modicum of optimism and compassion for humanity, Hillary Clinton would be miles behind, struggling to mitigate her pervasive image with the American public as an untrustworthy liar who should have been prosecuted for deliberately mishandling classified information.

Convention speakers and besotted Republican delegates will have to be careful about quoting Trump on Clinton. That’s dangerous ground. Clinton and her husband, who Trump now criticizes for his unsavory private life, were honored guests at Trump’s most recent wedding. A 2008 audio recording of Trump emerged the other day and finds the bloviator testifying to Hillary Clinton’s qualifications to serve as president or vice president.

Those lemmings known as Republican delegates may not know enough to be embarrassed during their four days in Cleveland, but voters will remind them in November.

Kevin Rennie is a lawyer, a former Republican state legislator in Connecticut and a columnist for the Hartford Courant. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.