CLEVELAND — As Mike Pence accepted the Republican Party’s nomination for vice president, I witnessed a supporter of Donald Trump and a Ted Cruz backer in a nearly chest-to-chest shouting match in the back of the convention floor, fighting over Cruz’s non-endorsement.

“We’re working hard for conservative principles, but the only way to beat Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is to unite — “

Before the Trump supporter from Arkansas could finish, a Cruz supporter I later identified as Colorado delegate and lawmaker Justin Everett interjected: “By selling out our principles?”

After the uproar on the floor generated by Cruz’s speech, which had him leaving the stage to a booing crowd of Trump supporters, a debate immediately broke out over whether he owed it to the party to endorse the nominee.

Putting aside that question, it isn’t fair to say that Cruz caused the disunity that we witnessed on the convention floor on Wednesday night. All he did was expose the lie at the heart of this convention — the lie that this is a party that has any real sense of unity.

This convention is a charade. Party leaders and those from the Trump campaign keep insisting that Republicans are coming together behind the nominee in a way that could make Baghdad Bob blush.

The reality is quite different.

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Dozens of prominent Republican elected officials chose to skip the convention altogether.

There is no true functional coalition of Republicans. The party is not uniting around Trump. All Cruz did was expose what is blatantly obvious to every intellectually honest person.