Republican Convention 2016: Scheduled In Cleveland!

After four months of primary voting, and one year after Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president of the United States, the Republican National Committee’s convention has arrived. The theme: Make America Great Again.

For four days, from July 18 to 21, Republican politicians, journalists, protesters, and the like will descend on Cleveland to make Trump the official presidential candidate for the Republican Party, with Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate.

The schedule:Quicken Loans Center, Cleveland, Ohio

Monday's theme: Make America Safe Again
Proceedings will begin at 7:50 pm eastern time.
Headlining speakers: Melania Trump; Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn; US Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa; Jason Beardsley, advisor for Concerned Veterans of America; US Rep. Ryan Zinke, Montana

Tuesday's theme: Make America Work Again
The convention will be called to order at 5:30 pm eastern time. The nomination process will begin on Tuesday.
Headlining speakers: Tiffany Trump; Kerry Woolard, general manager of Trump Winery; Donald Trump Jr.; Dr. Ben Carson; US Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-West Virginia; Kimberlin Brown, soap opera actress

Wednesday's theme: Make America First Again
Speakers will begin at 7 pm eastern time.
Headlining speakers: Lynne Patton, vice president of the Eric Trump Foundation; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich; Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Trump's vice presidential pick

Thursday's theme: Make America One Again
Speakers will begin at 7:30 pm eastern time
Headlining speakers: Peter Thiel, Paypal founder; Tom Barrack, founder and executive chair of Colony Capital; Ivanka Trump; Donald Trump

The Republican Party seems to have taken a few lines from Trump’s campaign speeches on trade, calling for "better negotiated trade agreements that put America first" in the party’s draft platform.
While the GOP has previously been a vigorous supporter of free trade, the drafted platform says, "Republican president will insist on parity in trade and will stand willing to implement countervailing duties if other countries don't cooperate."
The draft does not follow Trump in calling for an end to the North American Free Trade Agreement or in specifically upholding increased tariffs on Chinese imports, two policy points Trump has actively appealed for on the stump.
It isn’t really that Trump-y on a lot of other things:
On social issues like same-sex marriage and women’s issues, the party’s platform seems to stick to its long-established language: It opposes the Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing same-sex marriage and states that marriage should be defined as between a man and a woman but does not call for a constitutional amendment to that end and advocates for limiting bathroom usage by biological sex.
On education, the platform — in line with Trump — "congratulates" states that have opted out of Common Core curriculum standards and also says the Bible should be taught as part of "American history." The platform also opposes the current administration’s alleged "distortion of Title IX to micromanage" how higher education institutions handle sexual assault investigations.
On foreign policy, the platform sees the Iran nuclear deal as a "non-binding" agreement for the next president. The draft calls for legislation to "protect the national grid," pushing states to take action against the Chinese and Russian threat of electromagnetic pulse weapons, seeing an electromagnetic pulse as "no longer a theoretical concern." (As Yglesias notes, scientists don’t think this threat is real.)

On domestic political institutions, the platform calls for an "audit" of the Federal Reserve. It also maintains support for the Electoral College system and rebuffs a move to assign a president based on the popular vote.

The speakers:

The first released list of RNC convention speakers, as Vox’s Libby Nelson pointed out, looked more like a season of Celebrity Apprentice than a political event. But alas, despite speculation, quarterback Tim Tebow will not be in attendance, nor will a lot of other prominent governors, members of Congress, and prominent Republicans.

6 Things To Watch At The Republican Convention This Week

1. Will the Cleveland Convention stick to a script?

Successful conventions drive home a message relentlessly, with every speech, video and testimonial designed to highlight the strengths of the candidate and minimize his weaknesses. Trump has shown that he is allergic to this kind of discipline. Even the roll out of his vice presidential pick was shambolic and off message. Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman, told the Washington Post that one goal of the convention is to make Trump more "likable." After all, electing a president is more about "Like" Q than IQ.

Trump has promised to add some "showbiz" to what he says is the usual boring convention formula. He'll have a lot of eyeballs this week. Most analysts predict record audiences, and viewers are expecting something pretty fantastic from the king of reality TV. A boring convention packed with B-list celebrities could drive voters away, or motivate Trump to do or say something even more outrageous to keep their attention.

2. Does Trump expand his message?

Trump has shown time and time again that he's more comfortable with a spontaneous stream of consciousness rant than reading a speech from a TelePrompTer. And he's been phenomenally successful at capturing the emotions of people upset about a way of life they feel is being eroded by wage stagnation, demographic change and terrorist attacks.

The convention gives him a chance to lay out an actual agenda, to explain with specificity what he would do to improve their lives. The Trump campaign sees its path to the White House running through the Rust Belt — boosting turnout of white-working class men to historic levels. But the message for those voters may clash with what Trump needs to do to attract swing-state voters, suburban women and minorities. The convention will give us a good idea of whether Trump feels he has to modify his message to reach both his base and beyond — or not.

3. Breakout stars?

Conventions can give a rising star a chance to break out. That's what happened in 2004 when Barack Obama electrified the Democratic convention in Boston. The absence of so many leading Republicans in Cleveland may give others a chance to shine. We're watching to see if there is a 2004 Obama in the GOP lineup — maybe Ivanka Trump? Tom Cotton, the Arkansas senator? Pro-golfer Natalie Gulbis?

4. Will Mrs. Trump connect?

Wives are the best validators a candidate has. They can humanize a politician — the way Ann Romney and Michelle both did in 2012. Melania Trump, with her unusual background as a supermodel, could come across as affecting or too exotic.

5. Unity — will it happen or not?

"Never Trump" is nevermore, but there is still less enthusiasm about the nominee than at any modern presidential convention. Trump himself has been ambivalent about whether he really needs a unified party, but he has acknowledged that he doesn't have it yet. And he's admitted that party unity was the reason he chose Mike Pence as his running mate.

Polls show that Trump is getting the support of only about three-quarters of Republicans, a very low number. Conventions are often derided as four-day infomercials, but they serve an important purpose — getting an entire political party fired up behind the nominee. Will Cleveland do that for Trump?

6. Will Trump get a bump?

The average convention poll bounce for Democrats since 1964 is 6.8 percent; for Republicans, it's been 5.3 percent, according to Gallup. Sometimes a candidate gets no bounce at all. Romney didn't in 2012.

Trump is currently running a few points behind his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. Cleveland gives him a chance to close that gap.

There is no question that Trump remains a contentious figure in the Republican Party. The speaker list is notably thin for a presidential convention: Big names in the Republic Party like South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who delivered the State of the Union response this year, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, and governors who won in blue states are not on the roster. Former candidates for the Republican nomination Sens. John McCain, Rand Paul, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich are also absent.
Throughout the primaries, Trump’s biggest Republican critics floated the convention as a possible platform to oust Trump as the leader of the party — a process that would have required a fundamental change to convention rules and resulted in the ultimate breakdown of democracy. But the rules committee shot down all hopes of a NeverTrump coup in Cleveland, voting down proposals that would have allowed convention delegates to vote for whomever they wanted.
While there won’t be a fight on the convention floor, multiple activist groups are looking to protest the event, keeping Cleveland police on their toes. According to the New York Times, "Cleveland is bringing in roughly 2,500 law enforcement officers from as far away as California, Florida and Texas to bolster its convention-dedicated force of about 500."

Political conventions are often the time for the next generation of party leaders to make a name for themselves, but it’s hard to imagine the 2016 convention being anything other than four days of Donald Trump.

Credits: http://www.vox.com/2016/7/17/12199364/republican-convention-2016-rnc-speakers-schedule-platform

http://www.vox.com/2016/7/17/12199364/republican-convention-2016-rnc-speakers-schedule-platform