MILWAUKEE — When the Republicans put the final gavel to the wreckage of their convention in Cleveland eight years ago, they were in a state of nuclear meltdown.
Yes, they had a nominee in reality television star Donald Trump. But the party itself was a collection of warring factions that agreed on little by way of principles, beyond their collective desire to keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House.
Strategist David Urban, who helped organize the 2016 convention for Trump, recalls that the floor of Quicken Loans Arena felt like “enemy territory.” Tensions were thick between Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee. Even the normally rote process of passing a set of rules led to screaming matches between pro- and anti-Trump forces in the hall.
As one Colorado delegate told The Post: “I think the party is either in a major transition or in the throes of self-destruction.”
Now we know the answer: It was both.
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At this week’s convention, voices of dissent are almost nowhere to be heard. Roaming the floor, I caught up with South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, who was one of Trump’s earliest backers in the GOP establishment. The governor has been to nine of these gatherings before, and “the spirit and enthusiasm in this one is the greatest I have ever seen,” he told me. “I don’t recall one quite like this one ever.”
On Thursday, when Trump formally accepts the Republican nomination for the third time in a row, the atmosphere on the convention floor will be euphoric. The ultimate showman will finally have the coronation that was denied him eight years ago and that had to be curtailed to an unsatisfying virtual event because of covid in 2020.
Republicans are celebrating in part because they see the wind blowing their way. Though Trump remains an alienating figure to much of the nation — his approval rating never reached 50 percent while he was president — they believe they are heading toward a massive victory up and down the ballot in November.
Overconfidence? Maybe. There are still more than 100 days to go before the election, after all. But as Republicans are coalescing, Democrats find themselves in a state of near-catastrophic dissension over the question of whether to dump their own nominee, who also happens to be the sitting president of the United States.
Growing numbers believe President Biden’s disastrous performance in his debate with Trump last month was an unrecoverable stumble that could take the party down with him. The latest senior figure to call for the president to step aside — and one of the most prominent — is Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.), who said he has “serious concerns about whether the President can defeat Donald Trump in November.”
The Republicans’ exultant mood also speaks to something more visceral than this turn of fortune. The party loved Ronald Reagan, to be sure, but what it has come to feel for Trump is closer to religious veneration. Republicans see nothing less than a providential hand in the fact that he survived the closest of calls with a would-be assassin’s bullet.
“The transformation from whatever the party was before to what it is now is complete,” Urban said. “The feeling post-shooting is that this is destiny.”
In remaking their party in the former president’s image, Republican traditionalists capitulated to Trump’s insistence that they trim back their platform to 16 pages that do not include their long-standing support for an explicit national ban on abortion. They are jettisoning traditional conservative principles in favor of his credo of populism, restrictive trade and isolationism. It would once have been unthinkable for the party of Big Business to give a prime-time slot to Sean O’Brien, the general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, who delivered a fervently pro-labor speech Monday night.
That was followed Tuesday by a parade of tributes laid at Trump’s feet by his onetime foes — most notably by Nikki Haley, the last combatant standing against him in this year’s Republican primary. Where Haley had only months ago deemed Trump unhinged and unfit for office, she declared the former president now has her “strong endorsement,” and added: “I’m here tonight because we have a country to save, and a unified Republican Party is essential for saving her.”
No moment is so likely to encapsulate the GOP’s transformation into the Party of Trump as the traditional TV image that closes every political convention. On Thursday night, the once and possibly future president will be standing side by side on the stage with a running mate who once privately mused about whether his party’s leader was “America’s Hitler.” Sen. J.D. Vance (Ohio) — who is about to turn 40 and would be one of the youngest vice presidents in U.S. history — now counts himself as one of Trump’s staunchest allies.
In the eyes of many who will be in the convention hall, Vance has been tapped as the anointed one to carry the MAGA movement forward. Maybe that is so. But for now, the party’s heart and soul belong to Trump, and Trump alone.
Source link : https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/17/trump-gop-convention-takeover/
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Publish date : 2024-07-17 18:15:50
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