More chaos at RNC as Ted Cruz refuses to endorse Donald Trump, gets booed off stage

So much for par­ty uni­ty:

Repub­li­can lead­ers attempt­ed Wednes­day to steer their nation­al con­ven­tion in a more sub­stan­tive and uni­fied direc­tion behind GOP pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Don­ald Trump, but their efforts came up against an erup­tion of lin­ger­ing bit­ter­ness from the bru­tal pri­ma­ry cam­paign season.

The cap­stone of the evening was sup­posed to be a speech by Indi­ana Gov. Mike Pence, the new­ly named vice-pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee. But the more riv­et­ing moment came ear­li­er, when Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) point­ed­ly refused to endorse Trump, who had best­ed him in the race for the nom­i­na­tion, and urged Repub­li­cans to “vote your conscience.”

Cruz’s deci­sion not to get behind Trump angered Trump’s loy­al del­e­gates, who began loud­ly boo­ing and shout­ing at him as he attempt­ed to wrap up his speech.

You can see the spec­ta­cle for your­self cour­tesy of C‑SPAN (at around the twen­ty minute mark, Trump’s back­ers begin to make their dis­plea­sure known):

Trump him­self made his dis­plea­sure known by delib­er­ate­ly walk­ing out into the hall just as Cruz was deliv­er­ing the final lines of his speech, wav­ing to his back­ers and giv­ing them the thumbs up sign. The net­works imme­di­ate­ly piv­ot­ed away from Cruz to Trump’s planned ret­ribu­tive inter­rup­tion, and while Cruz could still be heard speak­ing, view­ers were see­ing Trump onscreen instead.

Trump also belit­tled Cruz on Twitter.

“Wow, Ted Cruz got booed off the stage, did­n’t hon­or the pledge! I saw his speech two hours ear­ly but let him speak any­way. No big deal!” Trump tweet­ed.

Uh huh.

The Clin­ton cam­paign, mean­while, sent out an email neat­ly sum­ma­riz­ing all of Cruz’s denun­ci­a­tions of Trump from ear­li­er this year, say­ing it’s under­stand­able that Cruz would­n’t want to make an endorsement.

[T]o be fair, would you want to endorse a guy who threat­ened to “spill the beans” on your wife and accused your dad of maybe killing JFK? No, you’d prob­a­bly say things like this:

• Cruz: “Don­ald, you’re a snivel­ing coward.”
• Cruz: “Don­ald does seem to have an issue with women. Don­ald does­n’t like strong women.”
• Cruz: “Don­ald doesn’t do very well in for­eign pol­i­cy [because] he doesn’t have even a basic mod­icum of knowledge.”
• Cruz: “Don­ald has had a long career of using great wealth and pow­er try­ing to bul­ly others.”
• Cruz said Trump was “engag­ing in demagoguery.”
• Cruz: “Of course it’s inap­pro­pri­ate to be attack­ing a fed­er­al judge’s race or ethnicity”
• Cruz: “Don­ald’s cam­paign, his entire cam­paign is built on a lie.”

Ouch!

The Seat­tle Times’ Jim Brun­ner reports that after Cruz’s speech, he had an encounter with Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty Chair Susan Hutchi­son, who has inglo­ri­ous­ly turned into one of Trump’s biggest local boosters:

Hutchi­son ran into Cruz, the for­mer Trump rival for the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion, near an ele­va­tor at the Quick­en Loans Arena.

She said she told him his speech was “inex­cus­able” and called him a “trai­tor to the party.”

The encounter was awk­ward giv­en that Washington’s del­e­ga­tion is stacked with Cruz supporters.

It was­n’t all that long ago that Susan Hutchi­son want­ed to lead King Coun­ty, the state’s largest juris­dic­tion. Nowa­days, though, Hutchi­son feels con­tempt for King Coun­ty — and Seat­tle in par­tic­u­lar — because it’s a Demo­c­ra­t­ic bastion:

When state GOP chair­man Susan Hutchi­son announced Washington’s votes for Trump in the tra­di­tion­al roll call of the states Tues­day, she talked about wheat fields, vol­ca­noes and Boe­ing planes.

She didn’t men­tion the Space Nee­dle, the Sea­hawks or any oth­er ref­er­ence to the state’s biggest city.

That was no acci­dent, Hutchi­son told del­e­gates at Wednesday’s break­fast meeting.

“I specif­i­cal­ly left out Seat­tle this year,” she said, cit­ing the state’s “mas­sive Demo­c­ra­t­ic votes” year after year. “It’s just time for the peo­ple of the rest of the state to rec­og­nize how impor­tant they are.”

Huh?

It’s iron­ic that Hutchi­son has been engag­ing in so much Seat­tle-bash­ing late­ly, con­sid­er­ing it’s the place she calls home. She and her fam­i­ly live in Lau­rel­hurst, which is one of the more afflu­ent neigh­bor­hoods in the city. They evi­dent­ly like our state’s largest city enough to live there in spite of its pro­gres­sive politics.

Hutchison’s pet­ty, sil­ly dia­tribes against Seat­tle are mis­placed. Seat­tle and King Coun­ty aren’t the rea­son why Democ­rats con­sis­tent­ly win statewide con­tests, for they can be out­vot­ed. It’s coun­ties like Sno­homish, cities like Belling­ham, and coastal com­mu­ni­ties like Port Townsend or Aberdeen that have deliv­ered Wash­ing­ton for Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates time and again.

King Coun­ty’s turnout as a whole has actu­al­ly been known to lag behind the statewide aver­age, espe­cial­ly in midterm and odd num­bered years.

How­ev­er, it picks up in pres­i­den­tial years (as does turnout in many swing coun­ties west of the Cas­cades), dri­ven in part by Demo­c­ra­t­ic get out the vote efforts.

Seat­tle trash talk may feel ther­a­peu­tic for the mil­i­tant right wing Repub­li­cans who view the city as an obsta­cle in the way of their schemes to turn Wash­ing­ton into the next Wis­con­sin, but it’s not going to broad­en their par­ty’s appeal.

The things Seat­telites want are the same things that Wash­ing­to­ni­ans from every cor­ner of the state want: great pub­lic schools, equal­i­ty for all, safe neigh­bor­hoods, broad pros­per­i­ty, fair tax­es, clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and the pro­tec­tion of our wild and majes­tic places for future generations.

Repub­li­cans’ past attempts to pit sub­ur­ban and rur­al vot­ers against Seat­tle vot­ers have end­ed in fail­ure, but they haven’t seem to have learned much of any­thing from those expe­ri­ences. Their bit­ter­ness is showing.