ReTrumplican convention will be long on First Family, short on political platform

RIGHT TO THE POINT

Last week the Democrats got together, patted each other on their backs and took turns telling us how bad Donald Trump is.

This week, many ReTrumplicans will gather in Charlotte, North Carolina, begrudgingly put on masks, tell everyone how great The Donald is and make a couple of sleepy Sleepy Joe Biden zingers.

Want to know what I would like to see?

I would like to see a Trump speech writer — and sweet buckets, since there are six Trumps speaking, writing short sentences for that brood would require more paid positions than minor league baseball these days — be as funny as Chattanooga Free Press contributing columnist Ron Hart.

Speaking of the family reunion at the podium, where are the young fiscal conservative voices from the party? Or, for that matter, where are the boomer fiscal conservatives in the GOP? Where are Mike Gallagher or James Lankford?

I would have liked to see, you know, a platform that, you know, lists some of the goals and objectives of the party as a whole beyond getting re-elected.

Still, amid the “Which Trump is this speaking?” question, the opening salvo Monday from Vice President Mike Pence offered the direction of the next few days. And in some ways, that direction is a wise one politically.

Pence responded to a repeated talking point from

Biden’s Boosters last week that our democracy is on the ballot in November with a stark reminder that “the economy is on the ballot … law and order is on the ballot.”

Those are electable platforms in a scared country that is united in name only.

It also is a stark reminder that brings the realization that for a lot of us who have voting records dominated by fiscally conservative choices, the ReTrumplicans have left us on the outside looking in.

And maybe that was the point of the speaker list and the shuffling of the GOP’s entire political platform, which ultimately will be whatever Trump wants it to be if he gets four more years.

This is a time filled with uncertainty, including the decisions looming about this presidential race.

Who knows, maybe Trump preaching to his followers will work. It could regalvanize a base that carried him four years ago against a candidate whom few liked.

Maybe this will seem eerily like 1988, when George H.W. Bush rallied from a sizable summer deficit to smoke Mike Dukakis with mudslinging and making voters fear our society’s safety with Dukakis as our leader.

But, this much is sure, the old Republican party has been Trumped.

(And no one crafting the speeches this week writes as funny as Ron does.)