"Just hold your nose."
That was the advice I heard a Republican activist give another member of the party who was hesitant to support Donald Trump. We had been chatting about her many years as a party loyalist – Cleveland was her 10th national convention – and when it came to the Trump nomination, she quickly pivoted away from Trump and toward other causes.
![Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during the final day of the Republican National Convention in ...](/web/20161101012054im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/q/c/i/v/f/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gqczqk.png/1469851848596.jpg)
"Repeat this," she told him. "Supreme Court. Supreme Court. Supreme Court."
Her advice was one small example of the party-unity work being done here in Cleveland. But notably, very little of it had to do with the candidate himself.
Nor, it turned out, did the convention, which tried to forge party unity through anti-Clinton rhetoric. But as soon as the festivities began on Monday, it became clear neither nose-pinching nor Hillary-bashing would be enough to reunite the fractured party.
The convention tumult signals a rough road ahead for Trump in the general election. But it may also mark the beginning of the GOP's transformation from the party of conservatism to the party of Trumpism.
The party divisions became visible the first day of the convention, when Never Trump forces tried to force a "freedom of conscience" floor vote, an attempt to free pledged delegates to vote for non-Trump candidates. The vote was thwarted, thanks to a bit of chicanery by the convention chairman, and for a few moments the hall devolved into shouts, credential-throwing and a dramatic walk-out.
Now, compared to conventions earlier in the 20th century, this is tame stuff. There were no thrown punches or mass arrests. No one bolted the party to declare an independent candidacy. The nomination itself was uncontested.
But the function of the party convention has changed dramatically since then. The nominee is known well in advance – 1976 was the last time a convention started without a candidate having the required delegates – so the intraparty fighting has moved from the convention hall to the primary season. Conventions have instead become about messaging: introducing candidates, spotlighting rising stars, and conveying an image of optimism and unity.
By that metric, the floor vote was a major misstep. But if Monday at the convention was a flop, Wednesday was an absolute fiasco. Ted Cruz, the Texas senator who had been Trump's primary rival for the nomination, was given a prime-time speaking slot.
Now, Cruz is not well-liked. It would be fair to say he is reviled by Senate Republicans, who see him as a self-promoter with no interest in party unity. But because he came into the convention with a large number of delegates, Cruz became the conduit for the anti-Trump forces. An endorsement from him would have made clear the Never Trump Republicans had no allies left.
That's not what Cruz offered. Near the end of a speech that mentioned Trump exactly once, Cruz exhorted Republicans to "stand and speak and vote your conscience". The crowd read those words as a reference to the earlier freedom-of-conscience vote and their boos drowned out the rest of his speech.
The convention hall devolved into chaos. Trump appeared in the back of the hall, drawing a swarm of media, and Heidi Cruz, Ted's wife, was escorted out by security as delegates began to shout at her.
After Cruz left the stage, the Jumbotron and other screens throughout the convention hall began to short out. They eventually went dark, as if to lend metaphorical weight to the scene unfolding in the hall.
The chaos closely paralleled the 1964 Republican convention, another year when the party was splitting in two. That year the conservatives were the insurgents, fighting against a party establishment led by moderate Republicans who sought constrained but effective government and expanded civil rights. The conservative favourite, Senator Barry Goldwater, won the nomination.
His victory did not silence the party's moderate wing. Governor Nelson Rockefeller, the standard-bearer of moderate Republicanism, gave a convention speech denouncing extremism in the party. As he bounded up to the microphone, Goldwater supporters hurled balls of paper at him. Boos and jeers drowned out the bulk of his speech. Yet Rockefeller was buoyant afterward. The speech wasn't enough to stop the Goldwater nomination, but he had taken a vocal stand against it.
Goldwater lost that election in a historic landslide. But his nomination turned out to be the first step in the conservative takeover of the GOP. Over the course of the 1960s and 1970s, moderate Republicans such as Rockefeller lost the battle for the heart of the party. They are all but extinct in the party today. Conservatives could very well lose the GOP to Trumpism in the same way.
The party activist I spoke to on Wednesday night attended her first convention in 1980, the year Ronald Reagan won the nomination. Thirty-six years later, Reaganism seems to be in eclipse.
In response to her fellow Republicans' worries about Trump, she offered a few words of comfort. "It'll be OK."
"Do you really believe that?" he asked.
She paused, then amended her statement. "I hope it will be OK."
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