Trump's RNC role is a much bigger mistake than Republicans realize

The Republican National Convention is lousy with Trumps. It's not just that the president will apparently be free associating for nearly an hour every evening ("Air Force One has more televisions than any plane in history. They've got them in closets, they've got them on ceilings, floors."). It's not just that his children and even some of their girlfriends and spouses have been given prominent speaking slots. It's that as an institution, the GOP has chosen to undergo a process of self-erasure, taking hours of free advertising that could have been anchored in touching up the party's brand or appealing to wavering Republicans and instead handing them heedlessly over to the president for him to butcher.