CLEVELAND — “It added to the excitement,” former Sen. Scott Brown said of the Monday floor fight at the Republican National Convention. Brown, riding a convention shuttle bus with me in the morning said he thought the party leadership handled the situation well, and that conservative leaders like Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, whose supporters fought for a roll call vote over RNC rules, should have “shut it down.”
“This was no different from parliamentary fights you see on the floor of the House or the Senate,” Brown said.
Maybe the leadership should have just allowed a roll call vote over the rules, I suggested. “Why?” Brown replied. “To detract from the presentation?” This echoed the argument from many Trump supporters that a roll call would have hurt Trump.
Brown, who served in the Senate from his 2009 special election victory until his defeat by Elizabeth Warren in 2012, had no criticism of party leadership, but did knock the conservative lawmakers whose allies led the floor fight. Former Va. Atty. Gen. Ken Cuccinelli, who played a lead role in the effort, was a Ted Cruz supporter during the GOP primaries. Brown put some blame on Cruz.
“What Cruz shoulda done is he shoulda said ‘listen, you gotta stand down.'” Brown said. “He has an opportunity to actually parlay himself into a really good position in the next round.” Brown continued: “Mike Lee leading the charge, it wasn’t a surprise. Everyone anticipated it. It’s just disappointing they didn’t just shut it down immediately and move on to try and unify the party.”
The floor fight got more attention than a roll call vote would have, but Brown thinks it was worth it. “I didn’t think it took away from it at all. I think it added to the excitement. People were paying attention. You woulda been out drinking beers probably.”
I also asked Brown what Trump could do to unify the party. “When I do give advice to Trump, I tell him to continue doing what he’s doing.”
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
