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THE TRUMP NATIONAL CONVENTION  
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Elaine Godfrey
July 12, 2024
The Atlantic
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_ The Republicans’ gathering in Milwaukee next week will be simply
this: a four-day fealty fest. _

Republican elephant, DonkeyHotey (CC BY 2.0)

 

You may not have thought it possible for the GOP to swaddle itself
tighter in the trappings of Donald Trump—for Republicans to more
completely absorb the former president’s essence. But next week,
they will.

The Republican National Convention, which begins Monday in Milwaukee,
will showcase a new iteration of the GOP. This year, the proposed
Republican Party platform is a Trump campaign document. The GOP’s
chief organizing and fundraising apparatus, the Republican National
Committee (RNC), has gone full MAGA; now led by Trump’s
daughter-in-law, it looks more like a subsidiary of Trump Inc. than a
traditional party organ. And instead of a celebration of big-tent
unity, the convention will be a four-day fealty fest.

Eight years after Trump’s first nominating convention, the old party
grandees have been pushed aside. The GOP platform has been stuffed
with his rally applause lines and shorn of policies that might cost
him votes. In short, Trump has asserted a level of control that’s
unprecedented in recent memory.

“It’s not business as usual,” Marc Racicot, the former Montana
governor who chaired the RNC from 2002 to 2003, told me. “The only
commodity that holds them all together is an abject commitment to
subscribe, to endorse, and to approve
of _the_ _grand_ _candidate_.”

First, the news that ruffled the feathers of GOP institutionalists:
Members of the RNC’s platform committee meeting early in Milwaukee
were reportedly shocked to find that, instead of dividing into
subcommittees for in-depth discussion of the platform and its planks,
party leaders had shown up with a policy document already prepared.
Instead of past years’ binders full of detailed plans and proposals
for governing, the RNC came with a 16-page stump statement
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a 20-point, all-caps list of Trumpian priorities: “STOP THE MIGRANT
CRIME EPIDEMIC,” “KEEP MEN OUT OF WOMEN’S SPORTS,” “BUILD A
GREAT IRON DOME MISSILE DEFENSE SHIELD.”

Adam Serwer: Stop soft-pedaling the GOP’s extreme positions
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The proposed platform contains just one mention of abortion,
reflecting Trump’s effort to distance himself from an issue that he
blamed for
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GOP’s lackluster performance in the 2022 midterms. Instead of
language urging a federal ban on abortion, as many among the party’s
socially conservative and evangelical base favor, the RNC document
promises only to oppose so-called late-term abortion.

Normally, nominating conventions provide a chance to celebrate
consensus-building and big tent–making. “There’s often a sense
that you want to sort of give different parts of the party space,”
Boris Heersink, a Fordham University political scientist, told me. And
drafting a party platform is usually a balancing act between party
leaders and principal candidates. “It’s a marketplace of ideas,
both moderate and conservative,” Racicot told me. In the past,
getting to a policy consensus and agreeing on language involved days
of research, argument, and amendments. This time, the platform was
presented, discussed, and approved by the committee in a matter of
hours. “They rolled us,” Gayle Ruzicka, an RNC platform committee
member from Utah, told a reporter
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after a meeting. “I’ve never seen this happen before,” she said.
“And I’m extremely disappointed that we don’t have any pro-life
language.”

But other Republicans did not share Ruzicka’s dismay. For them, the
leader gets what the leader wants. “For the first time, the nominee
decided to rewrite the platform in his image,” James Bopp Jr., a
longtime Republican convention delegate and anti-abortion lawyer, told
me. But Bopp is not upset by this. “Obviously people thought it was
important to do something different this time,” he said. Tom
Schreibel, the Wisconsin Republican Party national committeeman and a
platform subcommittee chair in 2016, agreed. “That’s what the
White House gets you,” he told me. “That’s what being the
nominee gets you.”

For national committees to undergo a rebrand when a new president is
elected is typical. But this situation is not. That’s partly because
Trump is not yet the elected president; he lost his bid in 2020, even
if he doesn’t acknowledge it. Theoretically, he isn’t the only
power center in the party; the Republicans control the House.
“Doubling down on the Trump of it all would make way more sense if
Trump was winning big victories and Republicans were struggling at the
congressional level,” Heersink, the author of _National Party
Organizations and Party Brands in American Politics_, told me. “In
this case, it’s sort of the opposite.”

It’s true that Trump is historically unpopular
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conventional polling measures. Yet, in this race, the polling also
shows that he has gained a definite edge against an incumbent
president whose own approval ratings are dismal—and whose inability
to speak extemporaneously has sparked an intra-party panic
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Mark Leibovich: C’mon, man
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The latest remodel of the GOP began in February. For months, Trump and
his allies had been critical of the former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel
for sluggish fundraising and her wavering support of Trump’s
stolen-election claims. So Trump endorsed his daughter-in-law, Lara
Trump; the former North Carolina GOP chair Michael Whatley; and the
senior Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita to lead the RNC. Trump
will have no trouble persuading that team to fight for his priorities:
Whatley, a prominent “Stop the Steal” advocate, was on the call
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2020 when Trump asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to
“find” him some more votes; Lara told a crowd last month in Texas
that “Donald Trump won in 2020; we all know that.”

Installing a family member at the top of the party’s political
apparatus is not without precedent
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the GOP, and it was only a matter of time before Trump’s insistence
on loyalty made such clannishness a requirement. The old guard does
not approve. Lara Trump “doesn’t know jack shit about running a
party,” Michael Steele, who chaired the RNC from 2009 to 2011, told
me this week. She’s there to direct money “the way Trump wants it
directed.”

And that’s more or less true. Since March, the RNC leaders have
driven the party’s train full steam toward Trump. First, they
cleaned house, firing more than 60 RNC staffers
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the country. (Personnel changes are typical when new management comes
in, Steele said, but mass dismissals shouldn’t happen “six months
out from a national election.”) Vowing to spend “every penny”
getting Trump reelected, Whatley and Lara Trump have set up a new
joint fundraising agreement
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Trump: Donations will go to the political-action committee that pays
the former president’s legal expenses before the remainder filters
down to the RNC.

This institutional takeover has quashed whatever Trump criticism or
anti-MAGA sentiment might have remained in the party’s
organizational and administrative echelons. “That’s always been
the end game,” Steele told me. “It’s just like any virus. It may
start in one particular organ, but the goal is to spread throughout
the body.”

Superficially, next week’s convention, which runs Monday through
Thursday, will look similar to previous versions—with all the usual
welcome parties and delegation breakfasts, panel discussions and
documentary screenings. It will be shiny and loud and, of course, full
of reporters. But, like the new platform, the event will have a single
focus.

Virtually zero anti-Trump elements of the GOP have survived the great
MAGA smoke-out. Trump’s top primary opponent, former Ambassador
Nikki Haley, who courted moderate voters, was not invited to attend
the convention. Instead, Amber Rose, a model and rapper, has
confirmed
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she’ll give a speech in support of Trump. Representative Marjorie
Taylor Greene of Georgia, the Senate candidate Kari Lake of Arizona,
and primary rival-turned-surrogate Vivek Ramaswamy are reportedly
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praise Trump onstage throughout the week. So is the chief executive of
Ultimate Fighting Championship, Dana White
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Each day of the convention is assigned a theme relating to Trump’s
campaign slogan. Monday’s for example, will mark Trump’s promise
to “Make America Wealthy Once Again,” and Tuesday’s will observe
his pledge to “Make America Safe Once Again.” On the
convention’s third day, Trump will have a chance to parade around
his vice-presidential choice, who is set to deliver a speech, perhaps
in accordance with that day’s Trumpian mantra: “Make America
Strong Once Again.” In yet another sign of the GOP becoming a Trump
family affair, Donald Trump Jr. is expected to introduce
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VP pick.

The convention will reach its climax on Thursday night, when Trump
takes the stage to accept the Republican nomination—probably, as he
so often does, to Lee Greenwood’s song “God Bless the USA.” In
his speech, the former president may outline a plan to “usher in a
new golden age for America,” as an RNC press release
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Maybe he’ll rant about Biden’s age or shark attacks
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airplanes
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In truth, what Trump says won’t matter much. His nomination, his
appearance, is the outcome that all of this hard work was for—the
platform-slashing and power-consolidating. Trump is dominant, and
everybody knows it.

_Elaine Godfrey
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writer at The Atlantic._

_Let the best of The Atlantic come to you. Select from our free
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* Donald Trump
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* Republican Party
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* Project 2025
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