MILWAUKEE — Welcome to The Campaign Moment. This week, we’ll be with you every night, running through the big moments and trends from the Republican National Convention.
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The big moment
Below are some takeaways.
1. The Vance pick is a confident, dicey one
The most significant event Monday was the GOP ticket being filled out. Trump bypassed two other finalists — Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum — to select Vance, a first-term senator.
In Vance, Trump charts a new course. While Mike Pence was selected in 2016 to appeal to establishment-oriented Republicans and a key voter group — evangelical Christians — Vance is the vanguard of a new, younger MAGA era in the Republican Party. Although much is yet to be determined, it could be politically dicey.
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Vance was not a popular Senate candidate in 2022, underperforming every other statewide Republican. His selection could also alienate more hawkish Republicans.
If nothing else, Trump’s choice of Vance appears to signal confidence about the election ahead. Trump picked him over other candidates with seemingly broader appeal — not just Rubio and Burgum, but also Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.) and others — apparently in hopes of having an ideologically aligned second-in-command. Trump is also effectively deputizing a new leader of the MAGA movement for the years and potentially decades to come.
Time will tell whether that confidence was warranted.
2. The assassination attempt loomed large, with a few references
About 48 hours after the attempted assassination of Trump in Pennsylvania, it wasn’t a huge focal point onstage — except in a few key moments.
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“On Saturday, the devil came to Pennsylvania holding a rifle, but an American lion got back up on his feet, and he roared!” Scott said as the crowd went wild. “Oh, yeah! He roared!”
And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) said in her speech, “I thank God that his hand was on President Trump.”
Teamsters president Sean O’Brien cited the shooting and called Trump “one tough SOB.”
But the big moment was when Trump appeared around 9 p.m. Central time, walking to his seat with a bandage on his ear. He appeared genuinely moved by the reception, as his supporters echoed his words from shortly after the attempted assassination: “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
3. No party for old hawks?
Vance, who once said, “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine,” wasn’t the only sign of an increasingly isolationist Republican Party. Seemingly approved remarks from multiple speakers pushed the GOP in a decidedly un-Reagan direction.
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“While hundreds of thousands of Americans are suffering, the Democrats spent over $175 billion — your tax dollars — to secure Ukraine’s borders,” Greene said. (Left unsaid: Around half of congressional Republicans have supported that aid as well.)
Turning Point USA head Charlie Kirk accused Biden of sending hundreds of billions to “foreign nations, while Gen Z has to pinch pennies.”
Tech investor David Sacks spent much of his speech on the topic, deriding U.S. involvement in a “forever war” and even saying Biden “provoked — yes, provoked — the Russians to invade Ukraine with talk of NATO expansion.”
Few big-name conservatives, outside of Tucker Carlson and Sen. Tommy Tuberville (Ala.), talk in those terms. And Sacks’s speech, in particular, was a huge departure from the Reagan era and even the GOP of a decade ago.
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4. The “unity” message has an uneven start
After the assassination attempt, the Trump campaign and Republicans previewed what was supposedly to be a more unifying message.
There was reason to doubt that would truly be what we’d get this week, and it proved a tough promise to keep.
One of the earliest speakers was Greene, who has repeatedly blamed Democrats for the assassination attempt, despite no direct evidence of the shooter’s motive. (The shooter was a registered Republican who once donated to a progressive group.)
“[Democrats] promised unity and delivered division,” Greene said, soon adding, “They promised normalcy and gave us Transgender Visibility Day on Easter Sunday.”
The overlap between those two days was a coincidence this year.
Another early speaker, Sen. Ron Johnson (Wis.), labeled Democrats’ policies “a clear and present danger to America, to our institutions, our values, and our people.”
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Republicans have recently pointed to similar rhetoric from Democrats, suggesting it contributed to what happened Saturday. Johnson reportedly said an old version of his speech was loaded into the teleprompter.
5. The GOP goes for new voters
The agenda Monday night was clearly aimed at appealing to key groups that favor Democrats but have drifted somewhat toward the GOP.
Five Black Republicans serve in Congress; four of them spoke onstage Monday. One, Rep. John James (Mich.), delivered a particularly well-received address. In addition, Republicans featured a pair of union leaders: O’Brien and Steamfitters Local 638 business manager Robert “Bobby” Bartels Jr.
Republicans won about 1 in 10 Black voters in the 2020 election, but polls this year have shown them winning as much as double that. They lost union members by double digits, but polling suggests that could be closer in 2024, too.
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O’Brien’s speech capped an interesting conclusion to the night. It was one of the longest and most rousing speeches, even though O’Brien didn’t endorse Trump. And O’Brien at times criticized corporations and the Chamber of Commerce, drawing decidedly uncertain responses from the crowd.
O’Brien wasn’t the only one to get a mixed response late in Monday’s program. The party welcomed model and TV personality Amber Rose, whose views on sexuality and related issues have been decried as fundamentally unconservative by some on the right. When Rose was announced, boos were heard.
Take a moment to read:
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