Political Spotlight
Conventions Recap
As Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are in full gear leading up to the
General Elections in November, let’s take a look back at the Republican
National Convention and the Democratic National Convention.
Republican National Convention
Held at the Quicken Loans Arena in
Cleveland, Ohio from July 15th – 18th,
the 2016 RNC has been described as
one of the most theatrical conventions
of all time, with music accompanying
entrances, loud, exciting cheering
throughout all four days, and
personalities such as Willie Robertson,
from Duck Dynasty. It resembled a party
rather than a political convention.
The first day of the convention saw
the 2016 Republican platform laid
out. The platform included policies
considered to be a departure from the
usual moderate conservatism, in favour
of strong, hard-right views, especially
in regards to social issues, including a
declaration that they would attempt to
overturn the Supreme Court decision
in regard to same-sex marriages and a
desire to condemn abortions for any
reason. On foreign issues, the Platform
Committee took many cues from
Donald Trump, including opposing
a two-state resolution for Israel and
Palestine and calling for a wall to be
built along the US-Mexico border.
While few moderate Republicans
attending the Convention opposed
some of the anti-LGBT language
among the policies, the platform passed
with only a few “nays” of dissention.
Despite the seemingly unified voice of
the party through the adoption of the
platform, the first day of the Convention
was marred with a few missteps. The
first occurred when Representative
Steve King from Iowa made a comment
during an interview with MSNBC about
the contributions of non-Caucasian
people to the advancement of society.
“I'd ask you to go back through
history and figure out, where are these
contributions that have been made by
these other categories of people that
you're talking about, where did any
other subgroup of people contribute
more to civilization?” King said.
But the biggest controversy of the day
occurred during Melania Trump’s
speech that night, when similarities
between a portion of her speech and
Michelle Obama’s 2008 Democratic
National Convention speech were
brought to light. The Trump Campaign
firmly denied the similarities, but
eventually speechwriter Meredith
McIver fell on her sword and accepted
blame for the plagiarism. McIver
stated that, “over the phone, she
[Melania] read some passages from
Mrs. Obama's speech as examples. I
wrote them down and later included
some of the phrasing in the draft that
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ultimately became the final speech.”
The main event of the second day
of the Convention was the deleg