The Arkansan who mattered most at the GOP convention got booed.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Sen. Tom Cotton and attorney general Leslie Rutledge all gave fine speeches to the audience in Cleveland. Former Gov. Mike Huckabee would have gone too but for a scheduling conflict. The speakers all represented the state well -- from the Republican viewpoint. That's the state viewpoint now. For the first time since Reconstruction, the Arkansas delegation arrived at the GOP convention representing a Republican state. Even as late as the last convention in 2012, Arkansas had a popular Democratic governor.
Before those speakers could take the stage and get their applause, though, somebody had to stamp out a few sparks. Those dying sparks were still being blown upon by the "Never Trump" movement, which never was able to start a fire.
I admire "Never Trump" members. They sincerely balked at nominating Donald Trump. That man's life story mocks many of the core principles Republicans espoused for decades. In the end, though, too many Republicans -- including some who detest Trump -- wouldn't usurp the primary's decision. Trump never got the majority of primary votes, but he won the majority of delegates fair and square. Hijacking the nomination from him would have been exactly the kind of "rigged game" his supporters believe the party leadership plays.
The "Never Trump" movement never found a candidate. The fact they never coalesced around an alternative's only the worst sign of the movement's weakness, not the only one. The plain fact is that a strong-enough movement would have won the procedural fights to free the delegates before the formal convention got started.
By the time the GOP convened on Monday, the only thing "Never Trump" might still have achieved was going out with a bang. That would have made them feel better without accomplishing anything else -- except giving a bonanza to the press.
Getting called biased repeatedly by the most biased people on Earth's goes with my profession. Reporters are pots who get called black by kettles every day. But the most pervasive bias in my profession is completely non-partisan. Our strongest bias is -- we love a fight. We want a fight, even when there's none or it's hopeless. And the "Never Trump" folks longed to give us one.
A fight over something already decisively settled wasn't how the party wanted to start its convention. To stop it, somebody had to walk out to the podium on Monday and tell "Never Trump" delegates the fight was over. It was an tough job but somebody had to do it.
By tradition, the man who should have gone out to that podium was the Speaker of the House, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis. He didn't go. The sight of the nation's highest-ranking Republican -- Ryan is second in line to succeed the president, after the vice-president -- slamming the door shut on fellow Republicans wasn't something to put in front of cameras.
This kind of task isn't something you give to some rookie who draws the short straw, either. The job required composure. The job required someone who had done this kind of "take one for the team" thing before. It also required someone who was an already named officer of the convention, such as a deputy presiding officer. I strongly suspect Ryan foresaw this need when he picked those presiding officers. In fact, I'd bet he knew who he wanted to walk out to the podium all along.
The job required standing in front of TV cameras while insisting on a voice vote. During the whole process, the presiding officer would get yelled at by hundreds of very angry, very frustrated delegates who were watching their sparks die. Those delegates knew the rules, and would exploit any weakness or loophole.
When that time came, the Republican Party sent in a colonel. Rep. Steve Womack of Rogers retired with that rank from the Arkansas Army National Guard in 2009. His role Monday is the kind of thing enemies remember and friends forget.
If Trump loses, Monday will become the mythical "last chance" to have stopped the election of Hillary Clinton. If Trump wins, Republicans who deplore the party's new direction will resent that voice vote. Like the French Resistance in World War II, I predict, the "Never Trump" movement will have a whole lot more members after the war than it ever did during it.
But somebody had to go Monday and do a tough, important job. The GOP's top leadership picked Womack. That should be noted.
Commentary on 07/23/2016