Vox [Zack Beauchamp/Jane Coaston/German Lopez/Ian Millhiser/Nicole Narea/Andrew Prokop/Aaron Rupar/Dylan Scott/Emily Stewart/Matthew Yglesias/Li Zhou]:
5 winners and 2 losers from the RNC's first night: Winners: The Fox News cinematic universe; Nikki Haley; Sen. Tim Scott; Recep Tayyip Erdogan; Covid-19; Losers: Optimism; The GOP beyond Trump. That cut Haley and Scott a lot of slack, "but the reason they stood out is that they felt out of step with the rest of the two-and-a-half-hour convention." In particular, the "story of Trump's triumph over Covid-19" was so unconvincing they scored that point for the virus, rather than flagging the story itself as the loser it was.
Republican National Convention speakers, explained for people who don't watch Fox News. The Tuesday night roster.
2 winners and 3 losers from night 2 of the RNC: Winners: Eric Trump ("the most effective orator of the evening"); nepotism. Losers: Ethics in government; The immigrants Trump didn't naturalize; RNC vetting.
Wednesday's Republican National Convention speakers, explained for people who don't watch Fox News.
2 winners and 3 losers from the third night of the Republican National Convention: Winners: The Republican Party's alliance with law enforcement; Gov. Kristi Noem (evidently the night's least embarrassing speaker; their words were "nothing all that extraordinary"; also "She inaccurately characterized Martin Luther King Jr. as a supporter of Republican approaches to racial issues"). Losers: Mike Pence's presidential aspirations; pretaped speeches; whitewashed feminism.
Thursday's Republican National Convention speakers, explained for people who don't watch Fox News.
3 winners and 4 losers from the final night of the Republican National Convention: Winners: Donald Trump; Black Republicans; The politicization of sports. Losers: The Mellon Auditorium; Social distancing; Riots; Bill de Blasio. This whole "winners/losers" thing has been sorely tested by the RNC. It worked better following debates, where some candidates did better/worse, and some issues were touted or ignored. With the RNC, the winners and losers were still relative, but the bar was so far below normal the "winning" speeches were merely the less embarrassing ones (remember, Eric Trump was the lead day two "winner"), and the reasons behind picking the non-people winners/losers were rarely obvious (e.g., Covid-19 was a day one winner, probably because whenever a speaker mentioned it, the claims made obviously rang false).
Tim Alberta: Grand old meltdown: "Trump's Republican Party is the very definition of a cult of personality."
The spectacle is unceasing. One day, it's a former top administration official going public with Trump's stated unwillingness to extend humanitarian aid to California because it's politically blue and Puerto Rico because it's "poor" and "dirty." The next day, it's Trump launching a boycott of Goodyear, a storied American company that employs 65,000 people, for one store's uneven ban on political apparel in the workplace. A day later, it's Steve Bannon, the president's former chief strategist, getting rung up on charges of swindling donors out of money for the private construction of a border wall, money he allegedly spent on yachts and luxury living. It was just the latest in a string of arrests that leave Trump looking eerily similar to the head of a criminal enterprise. What all of these incidents and so many more have in common is that not a single American's life has been improved; not a single little guy has been helped. Just as with the forceful dispersing of peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park -- done so he could hold up a prop Bible for flashing cameras -- Trump and his allies continue to wage symbolic battles whose principal casualties are ordinary people.
Eric Alterman: The 'abomination' of a convention makes clear the GOP threat.
David Atkins:
Zack Beauchamp:
Nick Sandmann, RNC speaker and Covington Catholic video star, explained: Why is an 18-year-old nobody speaking at the RNC?
Sandmann is the perfect victim: a young conservative man who came to Washington to protest abortion and was "smeared" by the left as being an awful racist because he had the temerity to wear one of President Trump's hats. The fact that he's been fighting the media, and forcing them to settle lawsuits, is icing on the cake.
In reality, though, Sandmann's appearance is a testament to the emptiness of this narrative. There's no policy argument connected to this story; revisiting it does nothing to convince voters that the Trump administration can make their lives better in any kind of material way. The RNC to date has been empty in this exact way, an attempt to gin up anger and fear at the base's enemies rather than sell a positive vision of America.
The RNC and the subtle rot of Trump's reality TV presidency: "Why the RNC's broadcasted naturalizations and pardon ceremony felt so wrong."
The RNC weaponized exhaustion: "The sheer volume of lies and illegal behavior from Trump and the Republicans is what allowed them to get away with it."
The first night of the RNC featured more false and misleading claims than all four nights of the DNC put together, according to a CNN fact-check. The second night starred an anti-abortion activist whose tale about the horrors of Planned Parenthood had been exposed as a fraud more than 10 years ago. On the third night, Vice President Mike Pence suggested that the murder of a police officer by a far-right extremist was a crime committed by left-wing rioters. It was all capped off by President Trump's Thursday night speech, a farrago of falsehoods that even veteran Trump fact-checkers found stunning.
Katelyn Burns:
Kimberly Guilfoyle's speech encapsulated the Fox News feel of the RNC's first night: "Loudly." How can a person find any logic in gibberish such as this:
"They want to control what you see and think and believe so that they can control how you live," she said. "They want to enslave you to the weak dependent liberal victim. They want to destroy this country and everything that we have fought for and hold dear. They want to steal your liberty, your freedom."
The only way to stop it, according to Guilfoyle, would be by reelecting President Donald Trump. She listed several of Trump's accomplishments since taking office, mentioning tax cuts, taking on ISIS, and renegotiating trade deals.
"Don't let the Democrats take you for granted," she said. "Don't let them step on you. Don't let them destroy your families, your lives, and your future. Don't let them kill future generations because they told you and brainwashed you and fed you lies that you weren't good enough."
Eric Trump's RNC speech had something rare: Policy substance. Just because he mentioned (in deceptive spin) a few things -- "tax cuts for the wealthy, cut regulations, an improved economy and reduced unemployment (before the pandemic triggered a collapse), and increased military funding, and the move of the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem" -- that the Trump administration had done doesn't make him a policy wonk, let alone explain the thinking behind de facto policies. Moreover, the thrust of his speech was wholly in line with the Trump campaign spiel:
Using imagery of the Hoover Dam and Mount Rushmore, Trump's speech painted a picture of an industrious heartland, ignored by the coastal elites. "Every day my father fights for the American people," he said. "The forgotten men and women of this country. The ones who embody the American spirit." . . .
"In the view of the radical Democrats, America is the source of the world's problems. As a result, they believe the only path forward is to erase history and forget the past. They want to destroy the monuments of our forefathers," he said. "They want to disrespect our national anthem by taking a knee, while our armed forces lay down their lives every day to protect our freedom. They do not want the Pledge of Allegiance in our schools. Many do not want one nation under God. The Democrats want to defund, destroy, and disrespect our law enforcement."
Trump went on to contrast this depiction of Democrats with his father, who he claimed is a champion for law enforcement, religious people, the "canceled," coal miners, and farmers. "To every proud American who bleeds red, white, and blue -- my father will continue to fight for you," Trump said.
This featured notion that Trump fights for the little guy is possibly the most grotesque lie in a campaign that is chock full of them.
John Cassidy: Mike Pence's big lie about Trump and the coronavirus at the Republican National Convention.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Pence's bowing and scraping to Trump is that he seems to revel in it. In an interview with the Times, his chief of staff, Marc Short, said Pence has studied previous Vice-Presidencies, and he "exemplifies servant leadership." Even in these twisted days, when Trump's takeover of the G.O.P. seems virtually complete, it isn't every elected Republican who would like to go in the history books as the forty-fifth President's most loyal and obsequious servant. As he demonstrated on Wednesday night, when he once again acted as Trump's lickspittle, Pence seems to fill the role naturally.
Jonathan Chait:
In 2016, Trump promised to make America safe again. He failed. I thought he said he'd "make America great again." He wasn't very clear on what "great" meant -- wasn't there something about "winning so much you grow tired of it"? I have my doubts that "great" is even something worth aiming for, but whatever it was meant to be, this can't be it.
Jane Coaston: Trump was supposed to change the GOP. But the GOP changed him. "How the Republican Party turned Donald Trump into one of their own." This formulation flips a common argument about Trump refashioning the Party in his own image. He has done some of that in terms of look and feel, but Trump's style is something that has been honed for years by Fox pundits: he's basically a receptacle and incubator for their rants. But he's stocked his administration with standard issue Republicans, many straight from lobby shops, and they've limited his policy options to what they would have any Republican doing.
Aaron Ross Coleman: Republicans claim Democrats want to defund the police. Biden's plan calls for more police.
Chas Danner: NYC tenants in RNC video say they were tricked.
Josh Dawsey: Trump escalates rhetoric on unrest in cities, looking for a campaign advantage.
David Dayen: A guide to the GOP Convention's pretend agenda.
Dan Diamond/Adam Cancryn: How Mike Pence slowed down the coronavirus response.
Thomas B Edsall: 'I fear that we are witnessing the end of American democracy': "The Frank racism of the contemporary Republican agenda is on display at the RNC."
Matt Ford: Donald Trump declares total war on the civil service: "The Republican National Convention is a testament to the president's effort to permanently recast the executive branch in his own warped image."
David Frum: The platform the GOP is too scared to publish: "The question is not why Republicans lack a coherent platform; it's why they're so reluctant to publish the one on which they're running."
Once you read the list, I think you'll agree that these are authentic ideas with meaningful policy consequences, and that they are broadly shared. The question is not why Republicans lack a coherent platform; it's why they're so reluctant to publish the one on which they're running.
- The most important mechanism of economic policy -- not the only tool, but the most important -- is adjusting the burden of taxation on society's richest citizens. . . .
- The coronavirus is a much-overhyped problem. It's not that dangerous and will soon burn itself out. . . .
- Climate change is a much-overhyped problem. It's probably not happening. If it is happening, it's not worth worrying about. . . . Regulations to protect the environment unnecessarily impede economic growth.
- China has become an economic and geopolitical adversary of the United States. . . . When China wins, the U.S. loses, and vice versa.
- The trade and alliance structures built after World War II are outdated. . . . If America acts decisively, allies will have to follow whether they like it or not -- as they will have to follow U.S. policy on Iran.
- Health care is a purchase like any other. Individuals should make their ow best deals in the insurance market with minimal government supervision. . . .
- Voting is a privilege. States should have wide latitude to regulate that privilege . . .
- Anti-Black racism has ceased to be an important problem in American life. At this point, the people most likely to be targets of adverse discrimination are whites, Christians, and Asian university applicants. Federal civil-rights-enforcement resources should concentrate on protecting them.
- The courts should move gradually and carefully toward eliminating the mistake made in 1965, when women's sexual privacy was elevated into a constitutional right.
- The post-Watergate ethics reforms overreached. We should welcome the trend toward unrestricted and secret campaign donations. . . .
- Trump's border wall is the right policy to slow illegal immigration; the task of enforcing immigration rules should not fall on business operators. . . .
- The country is gripped by a surge of crime and lawlessness as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement and its criticism of police. . . .
- Civility and respect are cherished ideals. But in the face of the overwhelming and unfair onslaught against President Donald Trump by the media and the "deep state," his occasional excesses on Twitter and at his rallies should be understood as pardonable reactions to much more severe misconduct by others.
So there's the platform, why not publish it? . . . This is a platform for a party that talks to itself, not to the rest of the country. And for those purposes, the platform will succeed most to the extent that it is communicated only implicitly, to those receptive to its message.
Masha Gessen: Trump's Republican National Convention was a spectacle fit for a would-be king.
To call things what they are, the Republicans adopted a fascist aesthetic for this year's Convention. It was in the pillars and the flags; the military-style outfit that Melania Trump wore to deliver her speech, on the second night; the screaming fervor with which many of the speeches were delivered; the repeated references to "law and order"; and phrases like "weakness is provocative," which the Republican senator Tom Cotton offered on the final evening. The aesthetic -- and the rhetoric -- held out the carrot of greatness, of what Hannah Arendt, explaining the appeal of totalitarian movements, called "victory and success as such," the prize of being on the winning side, whatever that side is. The seduction of greatness may grow proportionately to anxiety: the more scared one is -- of losing one's job or health insurance, or of the coronavirus, of the world never going back to normal, among other worries -- the more reassuring it is to say (better yet, to scream) that one lives in the greatest country on earth. One looks at people shouting triumphantly -- none of them social distancing, only a few wearing masks -- and one feels somehow uplifted by the fantasy of being one of them.
Susan B Glasser: The malign fantasy of Donald Trump's convention.
The problem, of course, is that America as we know it is currently in the midst of a mess not of Biden's making but of Trump's. Suffice it to say that, by the time Trump's speech was over and the red, white, and blue fireworks spelling out "2020" had been set off over the National Mall, late Thursday night, more than three thousand seven hundred Americans had died of the coronavirus since the start of the Convention -- more than perished on 9/11 -- and a hundred and eighty thousand Americans total had succumbed to the disease, a disease that Trump repeatedly denied was even a threat. His botched handling of the pandemic was the very reason that his Convention was taking place on the White House lawn in the first place.
Melissa Gira Grant: The real, paranoid housewives of the Republican Convention: "Patricia McCloskey and Kimberly Guilfoyle are a new twist on a dangerous lineage of conservative women."
Elliot Hannon: New citizens in Trump's naturalization stunt were unaware it would be used at RNC.
Monica Hesse: Trying to disgust you is the only move the Republican convention's antiabortion speakers have left.
Dan Hopkins: Why Trump's racist appeals might be less effective in 2020 than they were in 2016.
Sarah Jones: The GOP thinks Marxists are taking over. If only that were true: All this insane paranoia about radical Democrats and the march of socialism is helping to produce a backlash as more and more people wonder if that wouldn't be a good idea after all.
Fred Kaplan:
Ed Kilgore:
Republicans promised a convention, but delivered crazy talk: "On the first night of the RNC, speakers worshipped Trump but rarely mentioned their party, and many went over the brink with wild anti-Biden rhetoric."
Night two of the RNC badly needed an editor: "After a wild first night, the second night of the RNC had its insane moments but lacked pace and drama."
Pence warns that America won't be America without Trump: "Even the president hasn't yet made such a sweeping boast tying himself to the essence of the nation." But if you consider that the only thing separating his slogans "make America great again" and "keep America great" was Trump's election, he did. We just foolishly assumed he meant something more, but in the mind of a narcissist, what more could there be?
The big liar ends the RNC with big lies about himself and Biden: "Trump ended the convention as it began -- with efforts to salvage his record, make out Biden as a radical, frighten suburbanites, and ignore COVID-19."
Ezra Klein:
A loyalty test for the GOP, a reality test for the country: "The Republican Party has become a personality cult."
In the era of President Donald Trump, the news develops the quality "of being shocking without being surprising," wrote Masha Gessen in Surviving Autocracy. Each week's events are "an assault on the senses and the mental faculties," and yet, somehow, "just more of the same."
That's how I felt watching the first night of the Republican National Convention. It was a night that I couldn't quite believe. It was a night I could not have imagined going any other way. It was bizarre, unnerving, and unprecedented. It was banal, predictable, and expected.
"If you really want to drive them crazy, you say '12 more years,'" Trump said as he opened the convention. The crowd happily chanted "12 more years." It drove me a little crazy, but mostly left me tired. It's a performance of provocation hiding a convention that had nothing to say, only enemies to fight, social changes to fear.
What is there to say upon hearing Trump described as "the bodyguard of Western civilization?" It's not an argument so much as a loyalty oath, an offering cut from the speaker's dignity and burnt for the pleasure of the Dear Leader himself. But the outrageousness is the point. Protest and you're triggered -- just another oversensitive lib who can't take a joke. Ignore it and you're complicit. To care is to lose. . . .
Fact-checkers will have a field day with all this, but it's a bit beside the point. The sort of lie Trump and his supporters tell, writes Gessen, "is the power lie, or the bully lie. It is the lie of the bigger kid who took your hat and is wearing it -- while denying that he took it." That is the sort of lie that suffused Monday night's proceedings. The point isn't that it's true; it's that they can say it and no one can stop them.
The core of Trump's agenda has always been untethering American politics from factual reality, and among Republicans, at least, he's been startlingly successful. The convention is a loyalty test for Republicans, and a reality check for the rest of us.
The 3 charts that disprove Donald Trump's convention speech: "Trump wants to take credit for something he didn't do [pre-pandemic economic growth], and dodge blame for something he did do [coronavirus response]."
Michael Kruse: How Trump mastered the art of telling history his way. Grim conclusion, quoting Doug Brinkley: "And if he gets reelected with us knowing all of this, then he is a reflection of what America has become."
Nancy LeTourneau: How Trump inoculates his supporters against reality.
Eric Levitz:
German Lopez:
Why the RNC blamed "restorative justice" for the Parkland shooting: "The father of a Parkland shooting victim said school discipline, not gun laws, was to blame for the mass shooting."
Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the gun-toting St Louis couple, explained: "The couple is speaking at the first night of the Republican convention. Here's why."
Trump didn't just fail to address Covid-19. He made the crisis worse. "Trump and the RNC tried to put a positive spin on his record. But the facts are clear."
Trump failed on the opioid crisis -- and Democrats are letting him get away with it. This is the author's reporting turf, but I can't see it as an issue worth talking about in this election -- the dig against the Democrats is unfair, although when it does come up, the answer should point out that this is a public health problem, exacerbated by the lack of free and universal health care (which would include pain management and addiction treatment). Republicans fail because they don't want free and universal health care. Democrats won't succeed until they do. But since Biden isn't exactly campaigning for that, probably best not to play up the issue.
The absurdity of Trump's RNC speech, in one photo: The one on the left. On the right, without the sign but with a better view of the fireworks (symbolizing the destruction of American democracy?) is every bit as absurd (and even more malign?).
CNN fact-checked Trump's RNC speech on air. It took 3 minutes. "Trump's RNC speech averaged a false or misleading claim every 3 minutes." Includes a list of 21 items.
Andrew Marantz: The manic denialism of the Republican National Convention.
The problems in your life aren't real; the real problems are the ones that nobody, except for everybody on this stage, has the courage to talk about. The media wants to brainwash you; the Marxists are massing outside your idyllic suburban lawn; if the enemy gets its way, small businesses will be decimated, Thomas Jefferson will be cancelled, and 911 will go straight to voice mail. The speakers at the Republican National Convention keep ringing the same notes: fabricated panic followed by hoarse, manic Panglossianism. Jobs were lost under past Democrats, and they would be lost under future Democrats, but with President Trump there is only milk and honey. Joe Biden is a stultifying agent of the status quo, too boring to mention by name; he is also an unprecedented break with tradition, a threat to all that we hold dear. Climate change, of course, is waved away as mass hysteria; even the coronavirus pandemic is mentioned rarely and almost always in the past tense, as if the decision to deliver speeches in a cavernous, empty auditorium were merely the whim of a quirky location scout. Anyone watching from quarantine, during a once-in-a-century unemployment crisis, would not need a fact check to know that this is all a stretch, to say the least.
Marantz goes on for a few paragraphs like this, then he quotes Ronald Reagan from the RNC in 1980: "Never before in our history have Americans been called upon to face three grave threats to our very existence, any one of which could destroy us. We face a disintegrating economy, a weakened defense, and an energy policy based on the sharing of scarcity." As best I recall, one of those was bogus, and the other two were trivial compared to what we got after Reagan was elected. Marantz then segues into a review of Rick Perlstein's new book, Reaganland. One factoid he pulled out of there is that "84 percent of Reagan voters gave 'time for a change' as their major reason for choosing him -- not any ideological reason at all." I can imagine a high percentage of Trump voters saying that in 2016, but now? Depends on how effectively the R's can portray Biden as the incumbent, responsible for all the mess Trump rails about.
Nick Martin: The Republican National Convention's carnival of white grievance.
Ben Mathis-Lilley:
Harold Meyerson:
Unconventional: The Republicans, day one: "Even Diversity Night was nutcase night."
Unconventional: The Republicans, day two: "The Melania Mystery, the Kudlow Confusion, and the two-track convention."
Unconventional: The Republicans, day three: "Chicago, 1968; pandemic, Kenosha, and the hurricane, 2020: Reality has a way of intruding on the Republican celebration."
Unconventional: The Republicans, day four: "The GOP extravaganza concluded with a fireworks display, a sign of life in a limp evening."
Ian Millhiser:
The RNC's big Covid-19 lie, refused in one chart. Chart plots 7-day rolling average of new confirmed Covid-19 cases per million people, comparing US, EU, and six other well-to-do countries. "There are, in other words, world leader who did take decisive action to save lives. Donald Trump isn't one of them."
The RNC yanked a speaker who promoted an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory: Mary Ann Mendoza. "Cancel culture" lives on.
The most shocking line in Vice President Pence's 2020 RNC speech: "Pence blames right-wing violence on a vague leftist enemy."
Pence's speech highlighted a single law enforcement officer, strongly implying that this officer was the victim of left-wing radicals opposed to police officers and to President Trump: "Dave Patrick Underwood was an officer of the Department of Homeland Security's Federal Protective Service, who was shot and killed during the riots in Oakland, California," said Pence, before acknowledging Underwood's sister, who was in the audience.
Underwood's death is tragic, but it has nothing to do with left-wing radicals.
Underwood was killed just blocks away from anti-police violence protests in Oakland, but federal authorities say he was killed by Steven Carrillo, an Air Force staff sergeant and a follower of the "boogaloo boys," a right-wing extremist movement that, according to the Washington Post's Katie Shepherd, "has sought to use peaceful protests against police brutality to spread fringe views and ignite a race war." . . .
And yet, to Mike Pence, Underwood's death was just an opportunity to pin violence on his political opponents -- regardless of whether the attack has any real basis in fact.
Elie Mystal: We need to talk about the GOP's 'black friends': Several pieces here mention the relatively large number of black speakers at the RNC, but this article explains it: "The Republican National Convention has been all about using black people to convince white people it's OK to vote for a bigot." On the other hand, the ploy implies that the battle lines have shifted. George Wallace and Ronald Reagan never needed this sort of cover, but Trump's pollsters obviously felt he did. On the other hand, if Republicans believed that Trump had any appeal to black voters, they wouldn't be scrambling to help get Kanye West's name on battleground state ballots.
John Nichols:
The Party of whatever the hell Trump says: "The Grand Old Party convenes without a platform to stand on."
Timothy Noah:
Trump's incredible ignorance of suburbia: "The president sees suburban America as a bastion of white affluence -- an outdated view that could cost him the election."
Larry Kudlow's economic hallucinations: "Trump's chief economic adviser claims that stagnation, recession, and pessimism are all in the past. The numbers prove otherwise."
Anna North: Trump's pitch to evangelical voters, explained in one RNC speech: "He's 'the most pro-life president we have ever had,' according to anti-abortion activist Abby Johnson."
Rebecca Onion: American history has never seen anything to rival the Trumps' RNC family act: Alternate title, "The Trump children hogged the spotlight like nothing else in history."
JC Pan: The Republicans' love letter to rich culture warriors.
Cameron Peters: The difference between the DNC and RNC, in one tweet: It's mostly visual, so you'll have to follow the link to get it. Of course, that's not the only difference, or even the most important one.
Paul R Pillar: The costs of Mike Pompeo's partisanship.
Andrew Prokop: Why Republicans didn't write a platform for their convention this year: "The party's true priority is supporting Donald Trump."
Frank Rich: Trump thinks racism is his best chance: "Trailing in the polls, he used the Republican National Convention to ratchet his violence-encouraging rhetoric to an even more dangerous level."
Alyssa Rosenberg:
David Roth: Trump's cloud of gossip has poisoned America: "The president's insatiable need to traffic in rumor and conspiracy blows larger holes in our shared reality with each passing day."
Aaron Rupar:
The RNC keeps referring to Covid-19 in the past tense. 1,147 American deaths were reported Tuesday. Larry Kudlow was a prime offender.
"12 more years!": Trump's opening speech got the 2020 RNC off to a dark start.
The RNC disarray is a microcosm of everything Trump did wrong with the coronavirus.
Trump's RNC speech was a mess. But the optics of it were powerful. "For those who care about the rule of law, the White House being used as a political prop was a disconcerting sight." By the way, for some reason (well, the billboard picture) I just noticed that the trademark slogan Trump registered in 2017, "Keep America Great," has given way to a new one: "Make America Great Again!" Apparently they're acknowledging that greatness didn't take the first time, so it needs some sort of booster shot.
Greg Sargent: The GOP convention just ripped the mask off Trump's corruption and lies: On Pam Bondi's speech.
Dylan Scott: The contradictory Republican case to Black voters -- and why it matters.
Joshua Shanes: This was the week American fascism reached a tipping point.
Walter Shapiro:
Mike Pence is a parody of a politician.
Wednesday night, the gravely serious Mike Pence ended his workmanlike speech at Fort McHenry with a similar frenzy of repetition: "With President Donald Trump in the White House for four more years and with God's help, we will make America great again, again."
As presidential campaign slogans go, it isn't "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too," which helped elect William Henry Harrison in 1840.
Pence's oratory is revealing since he is a disciplined politician who obediently follows the script and scrupulously avoids crazed Trumpian improvisations. In short, every line in a Pence speech is there because White House political strategists thought it represented shrewd politics -- even Pence rhetorically sticking another scarlet "A" for "Again" on every MAGA hat. What the vice president is saying is that, despite Trump's supposed Mount Rushmore greatness, America needs saving yet again. In Pence's telling, the nation is akin to an innocent maiden in the silent movies who keeps getting tied to the railroad tracks.
Donald Trump, of course, has no responsibility for anything. Not the pandemic, not the economy, not White House incompetence, not a white vigilante killing protesters in Kenosha, and not Hurricane Laura devastating the Gulf Coast. Trump is simply the unluckiest president since William Henry Harrison died in office just a month after he was inaugurated in 1841.
Still unclear to me why, if God let Trump down in his first term, She's going to come to his rescue in a second term.
Alex Shephard:
Why the GO didn't write a new platform: "It isn't just that the party has surrendered to Trump. It's also because its policies are deeply unpopular."
Donald Trump is rooting for chaos: "A rambling convention speech underlined the core of his campaign: He needs violence and destruction to win reelection."
Roger Sollenberger: Registered foreign agent Pam Bondi accuses Joe Biden of self-dealing in Republican convention speech.
Emily Stewart: Trump's spent years touting the stock market. At the RNC, he just . . . didn't. "Somewhere along the way, did someone decide it might not be a moment to tout stocks?" As long as Trump stays on script, which he mostly did at the RNC, everything he says has been pre-cleared and calculated for effect. What he says is what his handlers think will do him the most good. They may not be right, but it's not for lack of polling and testing.
Emily VanDerWerff: The bland, boring visuals of the Republican National Convention: "The aesthetics of the 2020 RNC are a disaster."
Paul Waldman: The RNC will be a strange mix of denial and terror.
Joan Walsh:
Donald Trump has declared himself impotent: "A pitiful, hapless tyrant of a president blames the problems his administration has caused on out-of-office Joe Biden."
Alex Ward:
Mike Pompeo's RNC speech will place him as the most partisan secretary of state in decades. He's delivering the speech from Jerusalem.
Melania Trump used her RNC speech to defend her husband's record. "Unlike four years ago, there was no obvious plagiarism in her remarks this time around."
Robin Wright: A dubious Pompeo speech for an empty Trump foreign policy.
Li Zhou:
Iowa's Joni Ernst ties her reelection prospects to Trump with speech at the RNC: "She's the only vulnerable Republican senator who's speaking in primetime at the event."
Trump's argument about "Joe Biden's America" is undercut by the fact that he's in charge. Moreover, "It is police violence -- not protester violence -- that is threatening people's safety now."
Jonathan Zimmerman: Trumpism is the real cancel culture.