“However You Feel About It, What Happened in Cleveland Was Important”
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“HOWEVER YOU FEEL ABOUT IT, WHAT HAPPENED IN CLEVELAND WAS IMPORTANT” Colorado’s Oral History of the 2016 Republican National Convention LAUREL KAY TEAL HASTINGS COLLEGE Supervised by Dr. Glenn Avent, Dr. Rob Babcock, and Dr. Michella Marino This senior capstone is dedicated to the only other mountaineer, politico, and Hibernophile in our department: my friend, Nick Musgrave. See you on the Hill. Cheers! 1 Early in the morning on July 23rd, 2016, Republicans in Colorado House District 29B woke up to an email from their district captain, Dan Green.1 With a send time of 4:13 AM, Rocky Mountain Standard Time, Green’s email has the weary urgency of someone who has spent a long night thinking. To be sure, he had a lot to think about; in this email to his neighbors, Green effectively summarizes his past week as a delegate to the 2016 Republican National Convention. The email reads like a Netflix political drama. Descriptions of underground grassroots movements, vocal and physical struggles on the convention floor, and bullying by “uncharacteristically efficient” Donald Trump campaign operatives and Republican National Committee members abound.2 As he recounts, all of these things culminated not only in the selection of Mr. Trump as the Republican presidential nominee, but also the “troublemaker” Colorado delegation’s name pillar being accepted into the Smithsonian Institute.3 Summarizing the thoughts of many in his delegation, Green concludes his red eye email by urging, “However you feel about it, what happened in Cleveland was important.”4 From July 18th to July 21st, 2016, Republicans from around the United States gathered in Cleveland, Ohio for the quadrennial ritual that is the selection of a presidential nominee at party convention. However, the 2016 Republican National Convention would signify a major break from a long history of party precedent and from what is considered proper democratic practice. This is a break carried out both by the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee. At the very least, this is what was witnessed and remembered by members of the Colorado delegation to Cleveland. Partially for their attention-getting “walkout,” but most assuredly because of their role 1 Colorado House District 29B consists of Westminster and the outer Denver/Boulder suburbs. 2 Dan Green, email to Colorado House District 29B Republicans, July 23, 2016. 3 John Frank, “Sign from ‘Infamous’ Colorado Delegation at RNC Heading to Smithsonian,” The Denver Post, July 20th, 2016. 4 Ibid. 2 in the grassroots movement to unbind national delegates from state primary results, the Centennial State became a focal point of the 2016 RNC.5 It is through their eyes that the workings of this historic turning point for the nation and Republican Party are made clear—a turning point that perhaps marks the first of many in a brave new world unhindered by any historic or democratic precedent of the American political system. To understand how 2016 breaks from longstanding political standards, one must become acquainted with the convention system and with the Grand Old Party’s role in American politics. As the renowned historian and political scientist Theodore White often found himself re-iterating in his The Making of the President book series, the national convention system is perhaps one of the most unique quirks of American democracy. While it is admirable in its ability to effectively present a nominee without the cost and frivolity of a national primary, it is also “uniquely and particularly American, drawn from no handbook of political theory, designed by no master philosopher.”6 The practice of party convention, after all, was born out of a happy accident: an 1831 invention by anti-Freemasons frustrated by their lack of voice in the party system. Consequently, national party conventions exist, or should exist, as the climax of a long, educating process to incorporate all voices of the party. It should be “the final, flexible coupling in a year- long adventure of many men, in many states, whereby the fixed, parochial preferences of each state are finally bargained out on one site, at one time.”7 However, this coming together of states, people, and ideology at convention also serves a more useful—and powerful—purpose beyond the ironing out of party differences. It is also where the only legal vote for president occurs prior to the general election in November. 5 Colorado had 34 delegates to convention. 15 agreed to be interviewed for this project. 6 Theodore White, The Making of the President: 1968 (Harper Perennial, 1969), 363. 7 Ibid. 3 Indeed, as White once smirked in the face of remarks regarding the chaos of the Goldwater nomination at the 1964 RNC in San Francisco, “here, if anywhere, there should be combat and clash.”8 This is especially true for Republicans. According to 20th century political party historian and contemporary Republican think tank analyst, Geoffrey Kabaservice, “many of the GOP’s proudest achievements were typically the result of negotiations among the GOP’s factions. Internal dispute, for the Republican Party, was often an indication of its vitality as a national force.”9 For the GOP of the 20th Century, this certainly is the case. Kabaservice and White both point to the acceptance of various factions of conservatism during the Eisenhower administration, Goldwater convention, and grassroots movement of the 80s and 90s as being necessary—albeit unsettling— catalysts for strength and unity in the party. Moreover, these actions also allowed for the emergence of presidents such as Nixon and Reagan, “who understood that they had to mediate between a conservative party base and a moderate public… who reserved a role within the party [for factions] rather than expelling them for ideological heresy.”10 To infight, it would seem, is the Republican way—and one which produces powerful results. Indeed, it would appear that this has been the case for well over a century. As historian Heather Cox Richardson argues in her book, To Make Men Free: a History of the Republican Party, the GOP has been forever locked within its own swinging pendulum along the political spectrum of centrist/progressive and far right, reactionist ideology since the cessation of the Civil War.11 For example, a quick glance between the late 19th and early 20th century alone can demonstrate this: within a mere decade, the same party that once defended the unregulated 8 Theodore White, The Making of the President: 1964 (Harper Perennial, 1964), 201. 9 Geoffrey Kabaservice, Rule and Ruin: the downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party (Oxford University Press: 2013), 399. 10 Ibid. 11 Specifically, Richardson classifies this pendulum as the struggle to preserve individual liberties vs. the struggle to preserve individual property. 4 capitalism of robber barons was able to pivot under Theodore Roosevelt to break up their monopolies.12 According to Richardson, these shifts have always come from within the party’s own ranks—always as a solution when old states of affairs could no longer last, and always manifesting as discourse and clash between the party factions. It would seem then that the GOP is always in a constant state of remaking and has been since Lincoln. Were the party then to ever deny their own infighting—an infighting that usually occurs at convention—they would effectively be denying their own ability to grow and change with the nation, as they have done for well over a century. However, when speaking on Cleveland, Dan Green lets off with “this is a major break from the way we’ve done things in the past.”13The voices of the rest of the Colorado delegation certainly lend credence to his case. To be fair, some things remain the same as conventions in the past. For many, the end of the week in Cleveland devolved “more into the normal convention atmosphere that people are used to,” as State Representative Kim Ransom remembers following Thursday’s nomination.14 Yet, for almost every member of the delegation, memories of the week’s start carry the sharpness of a tense break from expectation of what convention should be. Instead of the celebration and excitement of previous conventions, State Representative Justin Everett remembers “more doom and gloom and dissention and anger than I had ever seen in the Republican Party.”15 Rather than the delegates feeling they had a voice and role to play, Anil Mathai remembers “a situation where it was supposed to be all business, and the business didn’t get done... I had barely been involved in the party.”16 Most frighteningly, rather than the clamorous presence 12 Heather Cox Richardson, To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party (Basic Books, 2014), 163 13 Dan Green. 14 Kim Ransom, telephone interview by author, Douglas County, Colorado, September 22, 2016 15 Justin Everett, telephone interview by author, Littleton, Colorado, September 12th, 2016. 16 Anil Mathai, telephone interview by author, Fort Collins, Colorado, September 26th, 2016. 5 of all of the GOP’s notorious factions in debate, Rules Committee member Guy Short recalls witnessing silencing of all groups but one.17 For Short, this was an “unholy alliance of former enemies” between the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee—one that was “able to come together to crush any type of conservative opposition.”18 Cleveland, undeniably, was to be a different kind of convention. For Republicans in Colorado, the long adventure to convention began months before, as the Centennial State went to neighborhood caucus on the evening of March 1st, 2016. Unlike their Democrat neighbors, Colorado Republicans did not participate in a straw poll for presidential candidates. Rather, the only votes casted were for local and state issues, and to elect representatives to the state convention on April 9th.