Killary! Clinton is the red meat that united Republicans

CLEVELAND (Ohio): Among the many striking exhibits at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in a city that originated the term is a blood red body suit made entirely from raw meat that was famously worn by the American singer Lady Gaga, ostensibly to express that one should "stand up for what we believe in and fight for our rights." But on the margins and on the main stage of the Republican Convention, it could well be a metaphor for raw anger and red rage that conservatives reserve for Democrats, Hillary Clinton in particular.

Indeed, forget platform and policy, Hillary Clinton is the red meat that is uniting Republicans in Cleveland. On a day the New York City mogul Donald Trump was formally anointed the GOP nominee in a political charade that revealed plenty of fissures – and a debacle involving alleged plagiarism by Trump’s wife — Republicans slobbering over each other for a chance to attack the Democratic candidate. Speaker after speaker tore into Clinton, riling up a partisan crowd that has a coined a bloodthirsty name for their hated figure – "Killary."

Given the number of wingnuts, weirdos, and wackos on the streets outside the convention center, the misogyny and malice directed at Hillary Clinton, expressed in buttons, stickers, and t-shirts calling her a "bitch" and seeking to send her to prison, is par for course. But in a gladiatorial atmosphere inside the Quicken Loans arena, home to the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team, lack of grace, dignity, and refinement was all too evident as several speakers stirred up the crowd with crude and toxic anti-Hillary invective.

"Making America Work Again" was touted as the theme for Day Two of the Republican convention, but platform and policy took a back seat to corrosive attacks on Hillary Clinton.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, both said to be angling for position in a prospective Trump Administration, were among the day’s attack dogs, throwing political red meat at the slavering mobs. One Republican speaker, former nomination aspirant Ben Carson, went so far as to link Hillary Clinton to Lucifer, the byword for devil or satan.

Having lost out the vice-presidential nomination to Mike Pence, Christie appeared to be auditioning for attorney-general as he conducted a mock trial of Hillary Clinton, reeling off a charge sheet against her before a partisan crowd and asking "IS she guilty or not?" after each charge. "Guilty!" and "Lock her up!" they screamed.

Remarkably, among the few speakers who stuck largely to policy was Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr, who, along with Trump’s daughter (from his second wife) Tiffany, had the task of overcoming the plagiarism debacle surrounding Trump’s third wife Melania.

The Trump campaign made light of the fiasco, its spinmeisters insisting that there were only some "common words and values" in Melania Trump’s speech in which two paras were almost identical with the one delivered by Michelle Obama in 2008. Lathered up by the liberal media (for whom this was the red meat), the cock-up consumed loads of airtime and bandwidth, even as howling conservative mobs directed their anger against Hillary Clinton.