We are now halfway through the Republican National Convention, and I still have yet to hear a single policy proposal or thing that the Republicans or Donald Trump are for. Well, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but not by much.

Before I get to reviewing Day Two, we've got to first take a look back at the aftermath of Day One. Because I do try to be fair-minded about things, yesterday I wrote about Melania Trump's speech:

Melania Trump, in all fairness, was impressive. She's never given a speech longer than a minute or so out on the campaign trail, so she was a real unknown quantity before tonight. Her English is heavily accented, but she delivered her lines almost flawlessly. She knew when to pause and flash a smile, her cadence was actually pretty good (for someone not used to public speaking or TelePrompTers), and she spoke about her personal story and her husband in ways the public simply hasn't heard before. She even gave gracious nods to all the other Republican candidates, and to Bob Dole (the only living Republican presidential nominee who showed up tonight).

I didn't have any expectations for what to expect from Trump's wife, but I have to say she gave a very good impression with her speech tonight. Her job was to humanize her husband, and I don't know if she achieved that or not with the public at large, but she certainly gave it her best shot. And her best shot was better than many political speeches heard throughout the evening, so my guess is that pundits on both sides of the aisle are going to give her some deserved credit for her speech.

Looks like I spoke too soon. The credit, it turns out, was undeserved, or perhaps "unmentioned" or "uncited." Melania had previously said in an interview that she had written her whole speech herself, with only minimal help from any campaign staff. This turned out to be a rather inconvenient lie when the plagiarism of Michelle Obama's 2008 convention speech came to light. The Trump campaign's reaction was pure Trump -- deny everything, accuse the media of making it all up, and then (very reluctantly) blame it on unnamed staff. Which proved Melania wasn't telling the truth about writing it, by the way.

Yes, the GOP convention is turning out to be nothing more than Amateur Hour, folks. Which brings us to today's events. Early on in the day, Paul Ryan opened up the roll call of state delegates, on a day which was billed as being about jobs and the economy (today's slogan was supposed to be "Make America Work Again"). Instead, virtually the entire day was devoted to bashing Hillary Clinton. A few speakers bravely tried to stick to the subject of jobs, but they were few and far between.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First we had the roll call. We had Jeff Sessions officially nominate Trump, and then Chris Collins and Henry McMaster second the motion. Collins gave a "they took our jobs!" style speech, and McMaster did have the best opening joke I've heard yet: "I asked my wife if in her wildest dreams she ever saw me nominating Donald Trump at the Republican convention and she told me that she was sorry to tell me that I never appear in her wildest dreams." Corny, but delivered well, I have to say.

We then got to the alphabetical roll call of states, complete with bragging about all the home-state sports teams, no matter how humble or obscure (Missouri and Kansas both tried to claim the Kansas City Royals, an amusing moment). Minnesota gave a shout-out to Prince, which was surprising but kind of nice, and Ohio seemed extremely pleased to award all its votes to John Kasich. One uncomfortable moment was when Corey Lewandowski spoke for the New Hampshire delegation, and I could have sworn the Nevada delegation bragged about their "capital city" of Las Vegas. Um... wonder what the delegate from Carson City thought about that. Michigan, for unexplained reasons known only to them, passed on their chance for state boosterism.

New York, of course, got the honor of putting Trump "over the top" in delegates, and the surprise was that Donald Trump Jr. was the one who got to cast the clinching votes. This was fairly well-staged, I have to admit, and I wonder how many times a son has done this for a father in American history. His "We love you, Dad" seemed heartfelt, and was the high point of the roll call.

Just before the show was supposed to get underway, Alaska demanded a recount of their delegation, which was due to an obscure disagreement about how delegates are officially awarded. So for the first five or ten minutes of the main portion of Day Two, what viewers got was a lot of disarray and people wondering what the heck was going on. Not the best optics to open with. But eventually Paul Ryan read off the final vote tally, with Trump at over 1,700 votes, all the way down to Rand Paul with two votes, and Jeb Bush with a grand total of three. Reportedly Bush spent $150 million on his campaign, which translates to $50 million per convention delegate -- possibly the worst "return on investment" in American political history. Mitch McConnell then came on and got everyone to unanimously agree to Mike Pence as the vice-presidential nominee.

Finally, we got the start of the evening lineup, with Sharon Day, who is co-chair of the Republican National Committee. She set the tone for the entire night, by bashing both Clintons as hard as possible, right off the bat. Also, Benghazi. Lots and lots and lots of Benghazi. I'd never seen Day speak before, but she did a fairly good job as rabble-rouser, which was obviously her role this evening.

The first bizarre guest of the night was Dana White, who started off with "I'm sure most of you are wondering 'what are you doing here?'" which was entirely correct. I was wondering precisely that, in fact. White told a personal story about Donald Trump helping him out when he took over the ultimate fighting organization he heads, which was one of the few times the purported theme of the evening was adhered to. He gave a sort of macho, shouty performance, but (oddly) a fairly cheerful and happy macho, shouty performance.

Next up was Asa Hutchinson, who got things back to the real theme of the evening, Hillary-bashing. In fact, my notes for the next two speakers (Leslie Rutledge and Mike Mukasey) were almost identical: "Hillary-bashing, more Hillary-bashing, Benghazi, and life under Clinton would be an absolute Hell on Earth." Mukasey at least managed to stay dignified and calm throughout his Hillary-bashing, something most of the other speakers didn't bother with.

Andy Wist was next, who also had a pretty good opening joke, explaining who he was: "Some said I was Batman -- that was Adam West, idiot." Wist was another of the rare speakers who stuck to the "Make America Work Again" theme, and talked entirely about economics and jobs. I don't think he even mentioned Hillary's name, in fact.

Ron Johnson was up next, and returned to Hillary-bashing with a vengeance. Liar! Benghazi! Radical Islamic terrorism! Johnson actually managed to work in a plug for his own tight Senate re-election race, something no other politician pulled off.

A National Rifle Association lobbyist was next, and I probably don't even have to tell you what his subject was. If you guessed "Hillary is going to personally take away everyone's guns," then you deserve a prize!

We then got a professional woman golfer, who was obviously included as "women's outreach," and she too bravely (and quite perkily) talked about economics and jobs and how wonderful Trump would be for both.

Trump himself then appeared by video, and he mostly stuck to his script, thanking everyone for his nomination briefly. This was the top of the second hour, I should mention, because the scheduling for the evening turned out to be almost as bad as the fiasco at the end of Day One. Again, I have no idea who is making the scheduling decisions, but they obviously aren't doing all that great a job (more Amateur Hour stuff, in other words). Conventions only get one hour's coverage a night from the broadcast networks, and once again Trump squandered at least half of it. Speakers came on in Hour Two who should have been in prime time, and vice versa.

Mitch McConnell arrived on stage after Trump's video, and a few boos were heard before he even got going. McConnell jumped on board the Hillary-bashing express, tossing out stuff that others hadn't even mentioned. Here are my notes for the start of his speech: "Liar! Benghazi! Sniper fire! Her own name! Flip-flopper! Baghdad Bob! Liar!" McConnell then bizarrely went on to tout the Republican Senate's record of getting pretty much nothing done for the past year and a half. He even shamelessly tried to place the blame for Senate inaction on the Zika virus crisis (going on six months now, with no funding to fight it) on Democrats. McConnell really tried making lemonade out of the lemons of his dismal leadership record, but it was pretty unconvincing to me. Dan Sullivan of Alaska then followed up (with a bunch of other GOP senators on stage) with an "aw, shucks, ain't the Senate great" sort of address that also went nowhere fast.

Paul Ryan then reappeared to give his own speech. He really should have gotten to speak in primetime, but he had to settle for rambling on for a long time on subjects the crowd truly didn't care much about (like poverty, for instance). He was also attempting some lemonade-making skills, asserting that GOP arguments show "signs of life" in the party. Um, OK, Paul... sure, whatever you say. The noticeable thing about Ryan's speech was how much crowd noise there was -- not in a good way (like applause), but rather in a "let's chat about stuff because this speaker is boring everyone to tears" kind of way. Even the applause lines barely woke anyone in the room up.

Kevin McCarthy then appeared, straight from Central Casting, to give the most generic partisan "Republicans good, Democrats bad" speech of the night. I mean, seriously, this speech could have been used at just about any GOP function in just about any decade. Thankfully, he at least kept it short.

Chris Christie was the real loser of the night, however, because he gave the most rousing and exciting speech all night -- before the primetime hour even started. He spent about one sentence talking up Trump before lighting into Hillary like a buzz saw for the rest of his speech. He sounded natural, well-paced, and he excited the crowd the way no other speaker tonight managed. His call-and-response ("Guilty... or not guilty?") thrilled the delegates, who also broke into "lock her up!" chants multiple times while Christie was speaking. Christie's speech could have been described as his "I want to be attorney general" audition, but snark aside he was the most dynamic and crowd-friendly speaker of the entire night. His takedown of Hillary was more detailed and more substantial than anyone else's -- on a night with many people vying for that prize -- and he certainly deserved a primetime slot. Just one more scheduling screwup we can chalk up to Team Trump.

Just before primetime began, the first Trump offspring took the stage. Tiffany Trump hasn't been heard from much in the campaign, but I thought she actually did a fairly good job for an amateur speaker. She was chirpy and upbeat, and she did a better job of humanizing her father than Melania managed the previous evening.

This brought us to the top of the primetime hour, which began with a Trump employee (who runs his Trump wine business). I guess this was supposed to highlight the whole economic message, and maybe it might have -- if any of the networks had shown her speech. Instead, they were all doing their analysis, and so her big moment was seen by only a few (who were watching the RNC live feed instead of television).

Out of six speakers during the big hour, only two really deserved to be there. The first of these was Donald Trump Junior, who I found to be insufferably smug, but then that's my reaction to many of his ilk and should be chalked up to my own bias. To be fair to Junior, he is an accomplished speaker. His speech flowed effortlessly in a manner even many professional politicians didn't manage tonight. He sounded natural and relaxed, in fact, and did an even better job than Tiffany of talking up his dad. Towards the end, he had to indulge himself in a bit of the old "Benghazi!" and Hillary-bashing, but for the most part his speech was a solid hit both with the delegates and the television audience. Isn't this the Trump kid who will take over Daddy's business empire if he wins? You can see why. In fact, he seems more on the ball than his own father, in many ways.

Next up was yet another mis-scheduled speaker, Shelly Moore Capito. The senator from West Virginia gave a dull snoozer of a speech, in which she blamed Barack Obama -- at seemingly endless length -- for all the problems with the coal industry. Maybe this is why so many speakers ignored the theme of the night, because economics is, essentially, pretty boring stuff. She did (finally) finish on a high note, but it was the only one during her speech.

Next came a real surprise star of the night -- Ben Carson. Not "sleepy, heavy-lidded Ben Carson" but rather "awake and energetic Ben Carson." No, really! You could see his eyes and everything! I'm being snarky, but Carson was clearly the most exciting speaker of the night -- the only person I've yet seen (other than Trump himself) who got a full-on standing ovation when he walked on stage. He even joked about it, as the first words out of his mouth were "Don't eat up my time!" when the crowd refused to stop wildly applauding.

Carson did fire up the crowd, but my guess is that this speech will be the one the late-night comedians zero in on tonight. Carson not only took the whole Hillary-bashing thing to another level, he threw in Saul Alinsky and essentially equated Hillary Clinton with Lucifer. He managed to imply that all Democrats were simultaneously secular and Satanists (say that three time fast, I dare you!).

The crowd absolutely ate it up, I should mention.

I was left wondering: if Carson had been half this animated on the campaign trail or during the debates, who knows how far he might have gotten? His energy level was higher than I've ever seen from Carson, and he absolutely had the crowd eating out of the palm of his hand. He also kept his remarks fairly short, so nobody got tired of hearing him speak.

But, once again, this is where the speechifying should have ended. Carson fires crowd up, drops microphone, walks off stage, show's over folks. That's the way it should have gone, but didn't. Instead we got two more people speaking who nobody cared about in the slightest, a soap opera actress and a bizarre prayer by a leader of "American Muslims for Trump." People had already streamed out the exits, though, so few actually listened to either of them. Once again, the evening ended with some political malpractice in the scheduling department, although nowhere near as bad as Day One's fiasco. At least they managed to end on time tonight, instead of running 40 minutes over. But why close with two uninspiring nobodies, after a rousing star's speech? It boggles the mind.

So that was it for the second day of the Republican convention. All day long the story was Melania's plagiarism (and the Trump campaign's ham-fisted reaction to it), and then we got an hours-long Hillary-bashing-fest. I suppose that's par for the course of a political convention, but again I am left wondering exactly what was supposed to convince any wavering voter out there that Donald Trump and the Republican Party has any sort of ideas or positive plans for the future. The only speaker who even attempted to answer this glaring lack was Paul Ryan, and the audience fell asleep during his speech. I'd be willing to bet a lot of Quatloos that next week the Democrats will have a showcase of positive plans for the future in their first two days, rather than just trying to convince America how awful the other party is. Maybe that's just me, though. We'll see if they get around to any of this in the next two days, but so far the Republicans seem most interested in convincing people to vote against Hillary rather than for Trump.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant