GOP civil war

Day 1: GOP civil war breaks out in Cleveland

Republicans who have yet to fall in line behind Trump find themselves in his campaign's cross hairs. 

By Louis Nelson, Nolan D. McCaskill and Kyle Cheney

Day One of the GOP’s national convention has been anything but unified.

Republicans opposed to Donald Trump by Monday afternoon appeared to have garnered enough signatures to force a full vote on the national convention rules, providing the small but determined Never-Trump forces a platform to embarrass the party’s presumptive nominee on the opening day of his own convention.

According to documents provided to POLITICO, the anti-Trump faction has secured a majority of delegates from nine states or territories to force the vote. (The group needed a majority of delegates from just seven states or territories.)

The anti-Trump wing said former New Hampshire Sen. Gordon Humphrey has submitted the signatures to the convention secretary, which will force a roll call floor vote from all 2,472 delegates on the Republican National Committee rules that a 112-member panel voted through last week.

The faction is hoping to nullify rules requiring pledged delegates to vote for the candidate based on their state’s primary or caucus results, instead freeing delegates to vote their conscience.

The move is likely to fail but highlights a divide in the fractured party that was already on full display even before the convention began.

Hours earlier, other Republicans who have yet to fall in line behind Trump found themselves in the cross hairs of his campaign, with surrogates for the Manhattan billionaire fanning out to trash the holdouts.

Newt Gingrich, fresh off finishing behind Indiana Gov. Mike Pence in the race to win a spot on the ticket alongside Trump, laid into 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney, who has been perhaps the loudest Republican voice opposing the party’s nominee. The former House speaker painted Romney as a wishy-washy Republican who wouldn’t say whether he supported Ronald Reagan in 1984 and refused to support Gingrich’s Contract with America in the 1990s. Romney, Gingrich said in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” was willing to support Republicans only “as long as we were supporting him.”

Gingrich had similarly harsh words on ABC for the Bush family, none of whom have backed Trump and none of whom are scheduled to attend this week’s festivities. They won't be missed, Gingrich said.

“The reason people nominated Donald Trump is they weren’t happy, and frankly the Bushes are behaving, I think, childishly,” Gingrich told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.

“Childishly?” Stephanopoulos replied.

“Childishly,” Gingrich said. “I mean, Jeb lost. You know, Get over it. I mean, the fact is, this Republican Party has been awfully good to the Bushes.”

Trump’s campaign chief, Paul Manafort, also took a dig at the anti-Trump wing of the Republican Party on Monday morning in an exchange with MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski. In response to a comment from Brzezinski that the RNC’s speaker lineup lacked some of the party’s biggest names, Manafort countered that all major Republicans “except for one or two” would be at the convention.

Brzezinski followed up by asking Manafort where John Kasich would be during the convention, eliciting a laugh from the live audience in Cleveland and putting the Ohio governor on a tee for the Trump campaign chairman to swing at.

“You know what, he’s making a big mistake,” Manafort said. “He’s hurting his state and embarrassing his state, frankly. But most of the Republicans who aren’t coming are people who have been part of the past. And people who are part of the future of the Republican Party are, frankly, going to be here participating in the program.”

Speaking to reporters at a Bloomberg Politics’ breakfast, Manafort suggested Kasich was acting “petulant” for refusing to endorse Trump.

Like the “Morning Joe” crowd that applauded the mention of Kasich’s name, the governor’s Ohio allies were quick to respond to Manafort’s attack. Kasich spokesman Chris Schrimpf wrote on Twitter that the governor’s approval ratings in Ohio and among Republicans are at record highs and “the state couldn't be more proud,” while Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges tweeted, “Manafort still has a lot to learn about Ohio politics. Doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Hope he can do better."

“Manafort bringing ‘professionalism’ to Trump, attacking @JohnKasich this morning,” another Kasich loyalist, strategist John Weaver, wrote on Twitter. “Just another pivot after great VP rollout. #ClownShow.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan also came to the Ohio governor’s defense, telling the Wall Street Journal he “would never say something like that about John.”

“I like him a lot,” Ryan added.

In an interview, Borges fired back at Manafort at greater length, telling POLITICO's Katie Glueck, “He’ll need to do better if we’re going to carry Ohio in the fall.”

“All along, we’ve been looking for a more unifying message coming from the Trump campaign,” Borges added. “And then he came to Cleveland this morning as we’re lifting the curtain on one of the crown jewels of the Republican Party and the effort we had in Ohio to bring this convention here, he decided to go in a direction that was obviously calculated — he did it on all the shows — and he’s factually incorrect.”

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who faces a tough reelection campaign in the fall that many say has been complicated by Trump’s bombastic campaign, also jumped to Kasich’s defense.

"The fact is, this Republican Party has been awfully good to the Bushes," Gingrich says.

“John Kasich is a great governor for Ohio and last I saw, the most popular elected official in Ohio,” Portman said Monday morning when asked to respond to Manafort’s comments. “So you know, he’s doing a great job.”

For its part, the party’s more traditional wing seemed less than enthusiastic about its candidate as the nominating convention got underway. House Speaker Paul Ryan, who has endorsed Trump but also loudly condemned some of the real estate mogul’s more controversial remarks, spent part of Monday morning touting his “A Better Way” agenda at state delegation meetings. But Ryan didn’t mention Trump once in his remarks to the Wisconsin delegation, according to a reporter who was there, instead pushing the package of policy proposals that he hopes Trump would champion if elected.

At the Pennsylvania delegation’s breakfast, also on Monday morning, Ryan’s comments were similarly light on Trump. The House speaker did heap praise on Pence, who he called a “Reagan-like happy warrior” and with whom Ryan was close when the two served together in Congress.

When Ryan did mention Trump, his praise was less than effusive. To move forward with his package of conervative proposals, the Wisconsin Republican urged the Pennsylvania delegation to look at the alternative, toughen up and vote for Trump.

“Guess what? Hillary Clinton doesn’t agree with any of this stuff. Donald Trump does,” Ryan said. “Look, I know this was a tough primary. This is a tough election. This is a binary choice. It is Trump or Clinton. That’s your choice. And guess what? We have shown we've got the guts. We have shown we are willing to put our necks on the line, we have shown we’re putting the specifics on the table and that we’re giving the country a choice.”

Republican National Committee Chairman commenced Day One of the convention — dubbed “Make America Safe Again” — on Monday afternoon with a moment of silence for fallen police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

“This convention will come to order. Delegates and alternates, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 2016 Republican national convention,” Priebus said. “Before we begin the official business of this convention, I would like to take a moment to recognize the fallen police officers in Baton Rouge, Dallas and elsewhere. The men and women who put their lives on the line every day, they are our genuine heroes. We want to recognize the families who lost loved ones during these troubling times. Our nation grieves when we see these awful killings. Will you join me in a moment of silence? Thank you.”

Following the presentation of colors, pledge of allegiance, national anthem and the invocation, the first musical interlude filled Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena with a unifying track, “Happy Together.”

Trump’s campaign, meanwhile, insists that the GOP is already coming together — and Pence is helping consolidate the party behind his candidacy.

“#RNCinCLE is underway!” Manafort tweeted 15 minutes into the convention. “Looking forward to unifying and invigorating our party this week. @realDonaldTrump and @mike_pence will do just that.”

In Trump’s joint appearance with the Indiana governor on “60 Minutes” on Sunday, Trump said he had picked Pence primarily for “party unity,” adding that his running mate has already helped bring the party together.

“I think it’s very close to unified,” Trump told interviewer Lesley Stahl, referring to the Republican Party coalescing around his candidacy. “I think it was much more unified than people thought. You saw that with the recent vote where we won in a landslide. You saw that with the big vote, the primary vote. I think it’s far more unified than the press lets on. But having Gov. Mike Pence has really — people that I wasn’t necessarily liking or getting along [with] are loving this pick, because they have such respect for him.”