CLEVELAND – As Republicans spilled into Cleveland on Monday to nominate Donald Trump as their presidential candidate, 2012 nominee Mitt Romney had an equally crucial task – entertaining his grandchildren at his lakeside summer house in New Hampshire.
U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona, the 2008 Republican nominee who has endorsed Trump despite the latter’s insults, attended an ice cream party with his wife, Cindy, and volunteers in his re-election campaign in Prescott, Arizona.
He also took part in a veterans’ gathering.
“Working out of my office in Miami this week,” former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who dropped out of the Republican presidential race in February, said in an email to Reuters. Bush had been the most active in attacking Trump on the campaign trail and has said he will not be voting for either Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton on November 8.
His brother, former President George W. Bush and father, former President George H.W. Bush, were also not at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
These are some of the big names from a long list of prominent Republicans who are not venturing this week to Cleveland, where Trump is to be formally nominated on Thursday after a rough-and-tumble Republican primary fight that ripped wounds in the party that have yet to heal.
Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort told reporters the convention is a “healing time” for the party and that Republicans will leave Cleveland united, but he criticised Ohio Governor John Kasich for not participating in an event in his own backyard.
And Republicans have moved past the Bush era, he added.
“They’re part of the past. We’re dealing with the future,” he said.
Kasich, a one-time rival of Trump’s for the nomination, is making the rounds in Cleveland without endorsing Trump or speaking at the convention, a snub that Manafort told NBC’s Today show is “embarrassing the state” of Ohio.
Kasich adviser John Weaver shot back: ‘Governor Kasich has made it clear why he hasn’t endorsed Mr Trump. They share a different world view in how to move the country forward.”
Some of the party’s best diverse talent was missing from Cleveland or limiting their participation, including U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a Cuban-American, and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, an Indian-American.
Many Republicans feel the party is in sore need of more Republicans like Rubio and Haley to appeal to a broader segment of the electorate.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney was in Wyoming helping the congressional campaign of his daughter, Liz Cheney, and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was talked about as a possible vice presidential running mate for Trump, was at home in Palo Alto, California. (Reuters)
