Party crashers: things unwind at the Republican and Democratic conventions.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth

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The Republican convention in Cleveland, despite the Trump tweets whirling around the ticker above the hall declaring each speaker "great" and announcing that Trump's kids were "killing it," felt like a flop.

The hall was mostly empty by the time Ben Carson wrapped up his speech Tuesday night, linking Hillary Clinton to Satan. Carson's closing was rudely upstaged by the third Code Pink protester to be shouted down by angry delegates and hauled off by security. This one, dressed in a pink ball gown, unleashed a "No Racism, No Hate" banner in the balcony.

"Ha! It's always a redhead," declared a Georgia delegate standing near me and looking on approvingly as other delegates pounced on the protester and covered her with an American flag.

Delegates closest to the podium seemed to find the protest spectacle more compelling than the final speeches of the night.

Can you blame them? The actress/ avocado farmer Kimberlin Brown, who followed Carson, was no more inspiring than Kerry Woolard, the general manager of Trump's Virginia winery, who also got a prime speaking slot.

Chris Christie got a rise out of the crowd with his Queen of Hearts routine, leading the floor to chant "Guilty!" and "Lock her up!" as he stood flanked by photos of a grimacing Hillary Clinton.

Hating Hillary was the one message that united the Republicans' badly fractured base.

As Christian Coalition founder Ralph Reed explained at a right-to-life luncheon, it was Phyllis Schlafly who changed the Republican Party from one "controlled by opinion elites in the North and the East to a grassroots, conservative party where the support came from the South and the West."

Schlafly helped make Barry Goldwater of Arizona the Republican nominee in 1964, shifting the party's political center of gravity. The Republicans have managed to hold together their coalition of angry culture warriors and yacht club members pretty well ever since. But this year, it all may finally be cracking up.

In 2016, Schlafly, founder of the anti-feminist Eagle Forum, threw her support behind Trump--whose brand of populism gives many Christian conservatives heartburn.

Schlafly estranged herself from her fellow board members, including her own daughter, by backing Trump. Many other "family values" Republicans are obviously dying inside over the Trump candidacy.

Reed and Schlafly both cited Trump's support for repealing the "Johnson amendment"--so churches and their affiliates can engage in politics without jeopardizing their nonprofit tax status--as the reason the Christian right should support him.

"And he's pro-life," Reed said of Trump, adding that the thrice-married billionaire is "for traditional marriage."

"I live by the Ronald Reagan motto that an 80 percent friend is not a 20 percent enemy," Reed said. "And Donald Trump is not an 80 percent friend. He's about a 95 percent friend."

Not everyone buys it.

When Ted Cruz took the stage and told the delegates and people watching at home to go to the polls and "vote your conscience," out on the floor there were boos and screams. Trump delegates stood up and turned their backs on the podium.

An outraged Cruz supporter, Tennessee delegate Julie West, stomped out in...