CLEVELAND—An alternate delegate from a northwestern state stopped me in the corridor off the floor of the convention to say she’d witnessed something astonishing today. “The rules are not the rules anymore, but I guess that’s cool?” She said that someone from her delegation, a young woman who had signed a petition to allow for a “conscience” vote, had been taken aside by an RNC enforcer and told that if she did not rescind her signature, “her life was going to be ruined.”

People can and will scream about the violation of fairness and procedure shown today by the Trump campaign and the RNC in putting down the final “Never Trump” effort at the convention. But when a voice vote was called for, there was no question the pro-Trump screamers were far louder and more passionate than the “conscience” screamers. Trump did win the party’s nomination, and the people here want this to be a successful convention, and most of them (one presumes) want him to win. If there’s one thing you can say about Trump and his people, they’re goons, and in the end, his supporters like the goonishness.