I saw this Breitbart headline and decided to read the story, looking for signs that Trump Nation has gone beyond mere griping about lost delegates:
Trump Supporters Walk Out of Georgia Delegate Fight After Party Picks Cruz Supporter...'Uproar in the Hall’
No, they're still not fighting back:
Donald Trump supporters walked out of a delegate election in Georgia Saturday to protest a vote that robbed Trump of all of his slated delegates from a district that he won in the primary.
A Cruz-Rubio alliance at the district convention in Buford, Georgia helped to knock Trump supporters out of the district’s national delegation altogether. Cruz supporters implied that Trump’s people would “embarrass” the district at the convention in Cleveland. Then things got heated.
But not too heated. The lone Trump supporter was denied a delegate slot and ... no riots ensued:
“There was an immediate uproar in the hall, and all the Trump delegates walked out in protest. The Trump County campaign manager had conveniently brought the American flag on display in the hall and took it with him after this undercutting of democracy,” [Trump backer Ronnie] Kurtz said.
Ooooh, the local campaign manager took the flag! Wow, that must have put the fear of God into the anti-Trump forces!
Trump supporters in Ga 7th District walk out -with flag- after losing delegate fight. https://t.co/ly9knGKntZ #gapol pic.twitter.com/HSlRL3QYnk
— Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) April 16, 2016
No, I guess not. Most of the people remaining in the hall seems to be smiling.
Things went disastrously for Trump throughout Georgia, a state he won:
On March 1, Donald Trump finished first in Georgia’s Republican presidential primary with 39 percent of the vote.
On Saturday, at gatherings of Republican activists meeting by congressional district, the billionaire may have lost most of the delegates that were supposed to come with that March 7 victory....
In the 11th District, which stretches from Buckhead into northwest Georgia, backers of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz swept up most of the delegate slots. Trump loyalists were skunked.
At the Sixth District gathering in Alpharetta, the Trump campaign salvaged one of the three delegate slots, but lost the rest. Two supporters of Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who garnered less than 6 percent of the primary vote, were named alternate delegates.
And on and on.
Look, I know Team Trump went into the presidential contest knowing jack about this aspect of running for president. But it doesn't require a working knowledge of the political process to organize a riot. Maybe just a "Brooks Brothers riot" -- recall that Roger Stone, the Trump advocate who's now nominally unconnected to the campaign, was one of the organizers of the demonstration that shut down the Bush-Gore recount in Miami.
It's clear now that the Trump people can't finagle at this level, but if they also can't intimidate, what have they got? All the blue-collar rage I keep hearing about hasn't motivated his fans to show up spontaneously at these gatherings to make their displeasure felt, and demonstrations that could be organized by an energetic intern aren't taking place, and Trump's backers aren't even driving by party headquarters and shooting out a window or two in reaction to these outcomes, so why should we think they can get it together to scare people at the convention? I continue to believe Trump's going to go down relatively quietly there. But we'll see.
Crossposted at No More Mr. Nice Blog
