The opening day of a normal national party convention goes by at a steady pace as delegates and guests bed themselves into the week. This is not your normal election race and this certainly is not your normal convention week.
Anyone that honestly believed that the Republican Convention was going to go by without controversy was kidding themselves. How quickly it descended into minor chaos still was a surprise.
The scenes of discontent took place during the typically routine convention process of accepting the rules for the week. A small selection of states attempted to force a state-by-state roll call vote on the rules.
Chants of “We want Trump” echo around the Quicken Loans Arena pic.twitter.com/y8ZBkBQDpu
— US Election 2016 (@USA_Votes) July 18, 2016
The protest fell short in numbers, with an unannounced number of states withdrawing their appeal for a roll call. This was seen as a last stand from the anti-Trump movement and ultimately it came up short.
The rest of the afternoon from inside the convention hall went by with the regular commotion but no more major drama or revolt.
A familiar message?
The evening session focusing on “Making America Safe Again” saw a mix of war veterans, TV personalities and family members of former servicemen, before the main event of the day, Donald Trump’s wife Melania taking the stage.
Whilst the veterans and active servicemen focused their speeches on taking the fight to the “enemy” in one can only assume military terms, Pat Smith, mother of Sean Smith who was killed in Benghazi, delivered a passionate and emotive talk questioning Hilary Clinton and her response to Sean’s death.
Conventional convention went out of the window as Donald Trump took to the stage to introduce his wife to the audience. Traditionally the presidential candidate to be only takes the stage on the final night after officially being elected as the party candidate.
Melania delivered a powerful talk which eventually became an attempt to cement the strength of her husband and his qualities for the role of president. That concluded the first day or so we all thought.
In the aftermath to her speech there has been a social media meltdown over supposed plagiarism of Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech. Judge for yourself below (credit Vox):
The big picture
Back on the convention-wide scope the Republican focus on anti-Hillary outcries look set to take centre-stage. If day one was anything to go by the GOP will not be holding back on their punches.
This convention may be remembered as a unification of a previously divided Republican party, the beginning of a successful presidential campaign and a character assassination of Hilary Clinton or a week in which the party fell apart from within, Trump stutters through the election race and the party fails to focus on political matters.
After just one day it is difficult to suggest which way it will go and with how the race for the White House has gone so far you would be a fool to make such predictions.
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