The RNC Is In Love With Your Feelings
A lot of people are just wondering how this year’s Republican National Convention was going to work. Donald Trump’s rise to popularity in this election is as much an enigma to some people as it is a clear and obvious choice for others. He has received more votes during the primary season than any Republican before him, and supporters revere his rhetorical methods ( being plain spoken and remarkably candid) as well his message (Make America Great Again) with qualities such as “strong” and “uncompromising”. Yet somehow, in the same breath — he only has a 34.9 % likability, just about 5% less than his opponent — the least popular Democrat to seek the Presidency in almost four decades. According to the New York Times Clinton has a 75% chance of winning the presidency, while a different poll shows the gap between her and Trump shrinking to a difference of just two or three percentage points.
Close elections aren’t terribly uncommon in the United States. The thing that makes the Trump Phenomena way less common is that he has put himself in this position where he has a real shot at becoming president, simply by saying he was going to do the things that millions of people have wanted, but feel they were being denied under the current administration. Things like building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico with Mexico’s money, a ban on Muslims, and of course — the new Republican standard — a replacement for the Affordable Care Act.
The wash, rinse, repeat style of his campaign has always worked to his advantage, endearing millions of people to his cause, cut it’s also resulted in arguably, one of the most frustrated support bases ever. Including diehards who think he’s the only real option and establishment Republicans cringing at the idea that they’ve waited four years for a real estate mogul who periodically did weeknights as the host of a reality T.V. show.
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The raw energy coming from both sides, has helped Trump ride an unprecedented wave of frustration strengthened by people who see him a leader who can, as Pat Roberts put it during his speech, “take the country back” , from what? On the rare chance that any convention speaker could answer that— then from who?
Running through the the arena each night was the absolute refusal to accept the rapid growth of religious un-affiliation or the diversifying American religious landscape in earnest , or the diversifying American landscape in general. Ben Carson droned about the dangers of electing Clinton, warning the crowd that “if we continue to allow them [secular progressives] to take God out of our lives, God will remove himself from us…we will no longer be blessed and our nation will go down the tubes”.
For Trump to host speakers who so carelessly drive a wedge between people of non-judeo Christian faiths and the Republican party seems too single minded to succeed in America. Is it not of the utmost importance as we try and manage an already strained relationship with our Muslim community? The community whose support the United States needs in order to effectively combat the type of radicalization that allowed the San Bernardino shooting to happen? Especially when the Homeland Security Chairman says that the biggest terrorist threat is digital?
Rudy Giuliani even went as far as to say he wasn’t trying to implicate innocent muslims in his claims about “radical Islamic Terror”, but followed by saying he only did so for the sake of the “left-wing media”;nullifying any notion that he was ready to talk about the issue in a nuanced way. Ultimately it was a mediocre non sequitur, that does nothing to build trust. It was almost humiliating.
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On the second day, as Governor Chris Christie spent 15 minutes mock prosecuting a fake Hillary Clinton, it became much more evident that he and nearly every speaker at the convention, wanted to pander to the audience rather than access Clinton’s statements about Assad being a “reformer” fairly. Pat Smith (the mother of an American slain in Benghazi) went as far as to say that she blames Hillary Clinton personally for her death of her son, asking “How could she do this to me?”
The speakers were able to exploit the scrutiny Clinton is facing for the email scandal and juxtapose it right up against criticisms of her handling of Benghazi and the removal of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya. What all the speakers failed to mention was that both Mike Pence and Trump supported the removal of Gadhafi. Is this over the top?Yes. Do these criticisms do anything to better articulate the Trump narrative? Not particularly, but it may have sold Hillary as someone who’s morals are questionable…only of course if that’s something you thought or already.
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Trump is already struggling with non-white demographics, but the convention was plagued by unrelatable immigration anecdotes, namely from the likes of his wife Melania. It’s not as if her story lacked inspiration, but it wasn’t reflective of the extreme poverty, lack of opportunity, and dangerous environments that drive a lot of illegal immigration. Her speech at no point acknowledged that immigrating to the United States from Europe is less stigmatized than coming from anywhere else, and that when we’re talking about immigration reform we’re talking about measures that will affect those who live south of the border most directly. Ultimately the merits of her speech were overshadowed after it was discovered that almost an entire paragraph from it was lifted directly from a speech by Michelle Obama in 2008. What divine irony is it that as all the speakers at the convention bash the sitting president, here’s Melania Trump openly admitting that she is a fan of Michelle Obama. Overall,the speeches made by his family members, each day lovingly humanized Trump, but didn’t portray him as a person who can compete with Clinton as an intellectual. What is the path towards victory with pure personality and nothing substantive or legislative?
The plagiarism incident wasn’t the last time that a convention speakers speech was totally outshined by a controversy. After referring to Donald trump as a “serial philanderer” and a “sniveling coward” while on the campaign trail, Ted Cruz still agreed to speak at the convention. When he didn’t openly give his endorsement the crowd could be heard booing him, but not before his speech was overshadowed Trump’s entrance, giving Ted Cruz time to sport his signature sad eyes.
Mike Pence’s acceptance of the Vice Presidential nomination was supposed to be the highlight of the third night, but there was just no way for it to outshine the brazen political theatre of Cruz and Trump. By the end of Pence’s speech, there was nothing new to know about what his name being on the ticket is going to really add. He can praise the success of Indiana, but ultimately that’s the same as Trump gassing himself for being a successful businessman. “Balanced budgets”,”low taxes”, and “tip toeing around the rules of political correctness” (otherwise known as being polite), is all great, but what does it matter when the more political name on the ticket can’t lay out specifics? There’s this inescapable feeling like a lot of what the speakers were saying overlooks the things at the core of people’s grievances
For example, rather than do something powerful like have a high ranking black policeman talk seriously about reforms that can influence police to think twice about using deadly force Trump invited Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke who lead his speech with a resounding “blue lives matter”. Though not an inherently terrible thing to say, it’s undoubtedly a wasted opportunity, one further squandered by Colorado Senatorial candidate Darryl Glenn. Glenn elected to use his “good tan” to strengthen the message that “All lives matter”, though, before getting off stage he assured the crowd that “blue lives matter”. This further feeds the conservative dogma that all lives matter and blue lives matter aren’t exclusionary and dangerous but black lives matter is. These kind of logical inconsistencies are why the racist subtext continues to plague the Trump campaign.
Ivanka, the final Trump child to speak, heralded her father as “color blind and gender neutral”, even as a genuine embracement of the latter is nowhere to be found in the GOP platform and achieving the former was a task largely overlooked during the course of the convention. Once Donald Trump actually took the stage and give the final address to the convention, the desire to hear something you haven’t heard before was immense.
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During his hour and a half long speech he referred to the restoration of “law and order” at least four times, insisting that crime is more of a problem, when it’s less of a problem. He vowed that “crime and violence that afflicts our nation” will soon be a thing of the past”, how he means to achieve that is anyone’s guess. Like many of the speakers before him Trump wars of the dangers of political correctness, not considering that fact that the exclusion of certain issues from his speech (for the sake of pandering to conservatives) and making it this far without condemning any of the aggression or overt prejudice exemplified by some of his supporters is textbook political correctness. Rattle off discouraging Latino and Black employment statistics, but don’t mention that unemployment is down and jobs are up. Cause that it might require acknowledging that the systems that perpetuate poverty are systematic, and don’t go away with the creation of more jobs.
Trump is beloved by his supporters and has successfully forced the hands of even the most naysaying members of the Republican establishment, but this election can still go any way. Trump needed to reel things in emotionally and use the convention as a platform to fight Clinton with his ideas — by proxy — using his speakers to that end. But as the dust settles, the RNC was a wash of deep feels, rather than a galvanizing moment during which Trump could truly begin to usher the Republican party into a new era. Instead, almost all of the speakers a, illuminated nothing new and spent four days on the same ineffectual criticisms, but with no new plans. People have been asking, “When is Trump going to sound more presidential?” or “when is Trump gonna hit us with the specifics?”, and after his showing on the final night of the RNC, people should really be asking “Is this it?”
