Republican Convention mood dims as Bush family called 'childish' for staying away

The conspicuous absence of so many party grandees is a slap in the face of Donald Trump

Former speaker Newt Gingrich has often spoken up for Trump (Getty)

The knives are coming out between Donald Trump and the assorted prominent Republicans who have opted to skip the party’s national convention in Cleveland, Ohio, because they disapprove of his becoming their nominee.

While the Trump campaign accused the Governor of Ohio, John Kasich, of embarrassing his own state by refusing to show up for the gathering in Cleveland, which opened on Monday afternoon and runs for four days, one of his staunchest supporters, Newt Gingrich, accused the Bush family, once the most powerful brand in the party, of acting “childishly” by staying away.

While there remained almost no chance of a successful mutiny being launched by dissident delegates at the convention to deny Mr Trump the nomination, the holes in the speaking schedule left by such party grandees as former President George W. Bush as well as his father, former President George H.W. Bush, were hard to ignore.

Mr Gingrich, the former House speaker who was passed over by Mr Trump last week as his choice for running mate in favour of Indiana Governor Mike Pence, insinuated in an interview with ABC News that the Bush clan wasn't coming because the presidential aspirations of one of their own had been torpedoed by the billionaire during the primary process.

That would be Jeb Bush, of course, the former Florida Governor who everyone saw as the prohibitive front-runner when the Republican field of hopefuls first came into view about a year ago. Instead, Mr Bush found himself branded as “low energy” by a belligerent Mr Trump and his campaign never took off.

Republican U.S. presidential candidate Jeb Bush announces that he is suspending his presidential campaign at his South Carolina primary night party in Columbia, South Carolina, (Reuters)

Most of Mr Trump’s jibes at Mr Bush were delivered in televised candidates’ debates, the first of which was held in the same arena in Cleveland where the convention is now under way nearly a year ago. Mr Trump in time would be similarly ruthless in assailing all the other candidates who came close to threatening him, including Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.

“The Republican party has been awfully good to the Bushes and they're showing remarkably little gratitude,” Mr Gingrich averred, before going on: “The reason people nominated Donald Trump is because they weren’t happy, and frankly, I think the Bushes are behaving childishly. Jeb lost. Get over it.”

But it isn’t just the Bushes who are conspicuous by their absence. The nominee from four years ago, Mitt Romney, is not in Cleveland either. Mr Romney led efforts earlier this year to discredit Mr Trump, notably in one speech in Utah where he reeled off what he said had been all of his business failures.

Senator John McCain, the party’s standard-bearer in 2008, said he had pressing plans to trek in the Grand Canyon, presumably after calculating that his campaign for re-election to the Senate from Arizona would not benefit from any association with Mr Trump. The other Arizona Senator, Jeff Flake, told reporters he could not go because he had to mow his lawn.

Appearing on Fox News, Peter Manafort, the Trump campaign chairman and manager of the convention for him, was pressed on the awkwardness of Governor Kasich boycotting the national gathering of his own party in his own state. Like Mr Bush, the Governor was also a victim of the Trump bulldozer and was forced to abandon his bid for the party nomination in May.

“He is embarrassing his state, frankly,” Mr Manafort argued, a statement that promoted a sharp and sarcastic rebuttal from John Weaver, who was Mr Kasich’s chief strategist for the primaries.

“Manafort’s problem, after all those years on the lam with thugs and autocrats, is that he can’t recognize principle and integrity,” Mr Weaver told The New York Times. “I do congratulate him though on a great pivot at the start of the convention after such a successful vice-presidential launch. He has brought great professionalism, direct from Kiev, to Trump world.”