3 THINGS ABOUT RNC NIGHT ONE 
By Lisa Desjardins, @LisaDNews
Correspondent

For voters looking for contrast, the Grand Old Party delivered, with a convention opening day Monday that was sharply distinct in philosophy, tone, and even hours of operation from Democrats’ version last week. 

Republicans began in the morning with a roll call vote conducted in person and in a formal style, across spaced out conference tables in Charlotte, N.C. Unlike Democrats’ cinematic  prime time roll call, with mostly pre-recorded speakers from various landscapes and walks of life, Republicans chose the traditional route, with each delegation represented by an individual giving a brief speech live in front of a printed “RNC” backdrop.

Republicans instead proffered a different kind of video catnip — repeated appearances by their candidate. President Donald Trump made an unannounced visit in Charlotte during the day, speaking extemporaneously for about an hour in the midst of the roll call, and was seen in videos throughout the night’s programming, chatting in roundtable-like segments with voters.

Here are three themes we noticed.

The other guys are intolerant

After a week in which Democrats presented their party’s platform as an inclusive vision of a more tolerant, diverse America, Republicans turned that argument on its head, with a drumbeat of speakers charging that Democrats are in fact the ones who want to exclude.

“Democrats won’t let you go to church, but they’ll let you protest,”  Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said in his remarks. “Democrats won’t let you go to work, but they’ll let you riot.”

“Joe Biden and the radical left are also now coming for our freedom of speech and want to bully us into submission,” thundered Donald Trump, Jr. 

Democrats call such assertions lies and point to Biden’s record promoting free speech around the world and as a person of faith himself. 

For Republicans, charging Democrats with intolerance was part one of a two-part maneuver on this theme. The other? Rejecting accusations that their leader is a racist. “I take it as a personal insult that people would think I’ve had a 37-year friendship with a racist,” said NFL Hall of Fame player Herschel Walker, who is Black.

Shouting vs. chatting 

Perhaps the most distinctive quality of the Republicans’ first night was a frequent and dramatic shift in tone. 

Many speakers focused on dark portraits of an America without Trump at the helm. “President Trump, he is fighting the forces of anarchy and communism,” said an emotional Maximo Alverez, a businessman who immigrated from Cuba. “I choose America. There is no other place to go.”

Several shouted tirades.

“[Democrats] want to enslave you to their weak, dependent, liberal victim ideology to the point that you will not recognize this country or yourself,” boomed Kimberly Guilfoyle, a lawyer and Trump advisor who is also the girlfriend of Donald Trump, Jr. “Don’t let them destroy your families, your lives, and your future.”

That stood in jolting contrast with Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., who followed Guilfoyle with a more upbeat and conversational tone. “Who better to lead us out of these times than the president who already built the strongest economy we’ve ever seen?” he asked.

The final speaker of the night, Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., chose gentler tones, if sometimes similar ideas. 

“We don’t give into cancel-culture” he said.  “We have work to do, but I believe in the goodness of America, the promise that all men and all women are created equal.”

Fear and fact-checking

Throughout the night, fact checkers kept busy.

Republicans, railing against Democrats in general and Joe Biden in particular, unleashed dozens of accusations against them.

Many were sweeping. Some were without foundation. One example:

“They want to abolish the suburbs altogether by ending single-family home zoning,” Patty McCloskey of St. Louis, said in taped remarks.  “Make no mistake, no matter where you live, your family will not be safe in the radical Democrats’ America.”

A Washington Post fact check, among others, disputed that statement, which referred to the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule. That policy is a recent effort to enforce regulations that help make housing, including suburban housing, more accessible to minority communities. 

What many of these statements had in common, though, was a prominent theme on night one: fear. Republicans, who had signaled their intention to run an uplifting convention, spent night one, at least, stoking many of the fears of their base and hoping to convince other Americans that a Trump defeat would be dangerous for the country and their way of life. 

#POLITICSTRIVIA
By Kate Grumke, @KGrumke
Politics producer

In honor of the second week of conventions, here’s a second week of convention trivia. At the Republican convention of 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the party’s nominee, but he was not chosen on the first ballot. The convention was brokered, with no candidate having a majority after the first two ballots. 

Our question: Where was the 1860 Republican convention held?

Send your answers to [email protected] or tweet using #PoliticsTrivia. The first correct answers will earn a shout-out next week.

Last week, we asked: Which president broke with tradition and flew to his party’s convention to give a speech formally accepting the nomination?

The answer: Franklin Delano Roosevelt

In 1932, FDR flew to Chicago to accept  the first of four nominations to run for president on the Democratic Party’s ticket. . In his speech, Roosevelt acknowledged that his was a weird move, saying, “the appearance before a national convention of its nominee for president, to be formally notified of his selection, is unprecedented and unusual, but these are unprecedented and unusual times.” At the time, the country was in the depths of the Great Depression.

Of course, that quote is not what is remembered from his 1932 speech. The most famous line is probably, “I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.”

Congratulations to our winners: Tim Smith and Michael Kanan!!

Thank you all for reading and watching. We’ll drop into your inbox next week.