CLEVELAND _ When Donald Trump's campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, outlined the GOP convention themes Monday morning, Republican Party unity was last on the list.
No surprise _ after Manafort started the day bashing some of the party's most admired leaders, including the Bush family and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, for skipping the convention in Cleveland.
"Certainly the Bush family, while we would have liked to have had them, they're part of the past," Manafort said at the morning briefing. "We're dealing with the future."
Kasich, he said, was also invited, but chose to sit it out, which he said was "embarrassing."
"We think that was a wrong decision," Manafort said.
As the party gathers in Cleveland to nominate Trump, it also is pulling itself apart.
What remains to be seen is if Trump's unlikely rise and brash populism can unify the frayed GOP, or if the Republican Party is becoming something else in the Trump era.
As Manafort put it Monday, the GOP voters who nominated Trump are moving ahead with or without the Bushes and other naysayers.
"They do not reflect the broad strokes of the Republican Party," he said.
Trump backers hoped the addition of Indiana Gov. Mike Pence to the GOP ticket as Trump's running mate would soothe wary Republicans unhappy with Trump's rise.
Pence has helped, but it's still, as Manafort said this week, "Trump's convention."
In detailing the week's themes, introducing voters to Trump, litigating the "failures of the Obama administration" and exposing Democrat Hillary Clinton's "character ... her personal issues," as Manafort put it, "the fourth and final piece of the strategy is to unify the party."
"We think that the unification is happening," he said. "We hope that when the Bush family decides to participate again in the political process, they will join us.
"But healing takes time, and we understand that."
