This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Utah Republicans were not impressed.
Gov. Gary Herbert stifled a yawn. Eagle Forum President Gayle Ruzicka fell asleep. And the reviews of Donald Trump's endless acceptance speech from the Beehive State delegates amounted to a collective, "Meh."
Being not just Republicans but also convention delegates and, in many cases, holders of public office, Utahns who were in Cleveland to hear their new nominee were reaching for reasons to support, or even to vote for, Trump in November.
Basically, those reasons came down to "He won the nomination of our party," to "He's not Hillary Clinton."
There was also some hope that, whatever else a President Trump would or would not do, he might do a better job than any Democrat of filling seats on the Supreme Court of the United States.
Unless the mercurial businessman, who Thursday expressed great admiration for the late Justice Antonin Scalia, changes his mind again and picks one of his children. Or a lawyer who came up the way Trump did, on reality TV. Justice Judy, anyone?
The Utah delegates were not crazy about Trump's demonization of immigrants from Mexico and were notably silent while the rest of the hall went crazy in support of Trump's repeated pledge to build a wall along the U.S. southern border. And his condemnation of Muslims rightly elicits in Utah Mormons a collective memory of a day when their faith was similarly demonized.
Utah Republicans now find themselves in what seems to be a small middle ground.
On one side are so many of the other convention delegates, who went crazy at Trump's denunciation of anything "politically correct," and cheered his pledges to save us all from a dark world of crime, social and economic decline and the dangers of people not like us.
On the other side is just about everyone else with an internet connection, pundits left and right who were busy pointing out that so many of the statistics on crime and immigration cited by Trump are flat falsehoods. Who were noting that Trump's call for us to elect him so he can fix everything is neither Republican nor conservative. Who pointed out that his opposition to multilateral trade deals stands directly opposed to decades of Republican policy.
If such Utah Republican stalwarts as Herbert, Ruzicka and Sen. Mike Lee are not happily boarding the Trump bandwagon, what might that mean for other Utahns, and others across the nation, who have not yet been called on to make up their minds?
As Lee said the other day, "We are in uncharted territory."