I haven't been watching the Republican Convention - shambolic versions of the Nuremberg Rallies aren't my thing - but Martin Longman's distinctive take on what happened seems to capture an important aspect, missing in most of the other accounts that I've seen.
It appears that the Trump camp (1) had full notice of what Cruz was planning to do, (2) organized the response of booing him off the stage and having Trump crowd his exit, and (3) informed him that this was their plan.
They may have hoped that he would find this intolerable and back down, but they couldn't have been counting on this, at least not 100%. What I think they were counting on is that, if he stuck to his plan and they stuck to theirs, the media takeaway would be "Cruz is punished and shamed for breaking his pledge" - making it a pro-unity moment, no less than when Trotsky was escorted over the Soviet border.
Since it didn't play out that way in the media, did they learn anything? I would say, all they learned is something that they already knew: that this is what can happen when, unlike Putin, you are still subject to the bias of an "unfair" media.
UPDATE: Right on cue, Trump said exactly what I thought he would say about the "dishonest" media's reporting of the Cruz speech.
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