First lady brings softer tone to GOP scare tactics
The mission of the fourday Republican National Convention is becoming clear: The GOP isn’t trying to win many new friends. It’s trying to convince the old ones to stick around.
Convention speakers aren’t mainly interested in converting wobbly independents when they compare Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to Fidel Castro. They’re trying to hang onto suburban women who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 when they accuse Democrats of wanting “to abolish the suburbs altogether” and supporting “the vengeful mob that wishes to destroy our way of life.”
Monday’s dire warnings of the threat Democrats posed to America took a backseat at times Tuesday, a night that Republicans advertised as the “Land of Opportunity.” Business owners praising Trump’s antiregulation
policies and a New Mexico police officer who helped a drugaddicted pregnant woman were featured, along with five new U.S. citizens being sworn in at the White House as the president looked on — a scene that critics said violated the law forbidding campaigning on federal property.
First lady Melania Trump capped off the evening with a speech — again, from the White House grounds — in which she struck a rare unifying tone. “It has been inspiring to see what the people of our great nation will do for one another, especially when we are at our most fragile,” she said.
But there were also plenty of speakers depicting Biden as a captive of radical leftists who would remake America in their socialist image and who embrace “cancel culture” to suppress conservative speech, with the help of a compliant mainstream media.
“The Republicans weren’t trying to persuade anyone or talk about any themes that anyone but their base already buys into,” Alan Schroeder, a Northeastern University professor emeritus and expert on the theatrical aspects of politics, said after the convention’s first night.
“It felt like a challenger’s convention, not an incumbent’s,” Schroeder said. “Speaker after speaker came out and said that things are horrible, but yet, elect the guy who has been in charge for the last four years. There’s a fundamental contradiction there.”
He added, “The Trump campaign doesn’t seem very comfortable.”
Polls do show Trump trailing in battleground states he won four years ago, including Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida. He’s struggling in longtime GOP strongholds like Arizona and North Carolina.
He has lost ground among seniors and suburban voters who backed him four years ago, and on the convention’s opening night, his campaign appeared convinced that the way to keep them was to cast the alternative in nearapocalyptic terms rather than the “aspirational and uplifting” tone that party Chair Ronna McDaniel promised.
Many speakers warned that “Beijing Biden,” as the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. called him, will hand the country to his “radical socialist” friends.
“The woketopians,” Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz said, “will disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home and invite MS13 to live next door, and the police aren’t coming when you call.”
In fact, Gaetz said, Biden wants to “defund the police.” Biden says he does not support the idea, though many progressive Democrats do endorse shrinking police responsibility and delegating some duties to other experts — for example, having social workers respond to homelessness complaints or health care workers handle people with substance abuse problems.
The party softened its tone Tuesday with a program that more closely resembled past GOP conventions, with speakers denouncing abortion and calling for lower taxes. There were also signs that the campaign recognizes Trump’s troubled standing among female voters — polls show women are far less likely to vote for him than men.
Melania Trump tried to help him by being one of the first speakers during the convention to acknowledge the more than 175,000 Americans who have died from COVID19.
“My deepest sympathies go out to everyone who has lost a loved one,” she said. “And my prayers with those who are ill or suffering. I know many people are anxious and some feel helpless. I want you to know that you are not alone.”
But the theme of the first night was still there. Cissie Graham Lynch, granddaughter of Christian televangelist Billy Graham, said “the Biden(Kamala) Harris vision for America leaves no room for people of faith.”
“In America we have not yet experienced physical persecution, even though the left has tried to silence us,” Lynch said.
“Even during the pandemic we saw how quickly life can change. Some Democratic leaders tried to ban church services while marijuana shops and abortion clinics were declared essential.”
One challenge for Republicans hoping to keep seniors and suburban voters from deserting in November is the need to rewrite the history of Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Only 31% of voters in an Ipsos/Axios Coronavirus Index poll this week said they trust what the president has to say about the pandemic, compared with 46% who trust Biden.
The apparent solution: Don’t talk about it. Other than Melania Trump’s comments, the coronavirus was barely mentioned Tuesday. The night before, the subject led to one of the few moments of optimism, as Trump Jr. depicted his father as leading the country out of dark times.
“As the virus began to spread, the president acted quickly and ensured ventilators got to hospitals that needed them most,” Trump Jr. said. “He delivered PPE to our brave frontline workers. And he rallied the mighty American private sector to tackle this new challenge.
“There is more work to do, but there is light at the end of the tunnel,” Trump Jr. said.
That was at odds with how Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican whom polls consistently cite as one of the nation’s most popular governors, described Trump’s response. Hogan, who is not scheduled to address the convention, wrote in the Washington Post last month of his dismay early in the pandemic as the president “downplayed the outbreak’s severity and as the White House failed to issue public warnings, draw up a 50state strategy, or dispatch medical gear or lifesaving ventilators from the national stockpile to American hospitals.”
The Trump campaign does appear interested in winning over one group of Democrats this week — people of color.
Monday’s lineup featured four Black speakers including South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, who gave a closing speech that was one of the more upbeat of the night. On Tuesday, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who is African American, only quickly mentioned the police killing of Breonna Taylor. a case he is investigating. Instead he criticized Biden for telling a popular New York radio host in May that “if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t Black.”
“Mr. Vice President,” Cameron said, “look at me. I am Black. We are not all the same, sir.”
Brittany Packnett Cunningham, an activist who served on former President Barack Obama’s 21st Century Policing Task Force, said Trump “is making a clear play for Black voters.” Democrats typically win the African American vote overwhelmingly, and polls this year show Black voters supporting Biden by about 91.
“He knows he’s not going to win the majority of us or even a plurality, but what he can do is attempt to peel off a few percentage points of Black voters in essential states,” she told MSNBC.
Steve Phillips, a San Francisco attorney and founder of the Democracy in Color political organization, told The Chronicle that “even more than trying to peel off Black support, they’re trying to win back the collegeeducated whites who are fleeing the Republicans in droves, appalled by the naked racism of the president.” Phillips chronicled 350 racist statements by Trump and his team since 2017 in a report Tuesday called “The Trump Administration’s Record of Racism.”
But Tory Gavito, cofounder of Way to Win, a progressive organization that funds grassroots organizations in battleground states, cautioned Democrats to “not be smug. I heard a lot at the RNC that will move many of our voters (Democrats) toward Trump.”
Black voters aren’t the only part of the Democratic base being eyed by Trump, Gavito said. Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley’s story Monday of how her Indian immigrant parents sacrificed when they came to the U.S. in search of a better life will resonate with many voters, particularly Latinos, Gavito said.
So will that of Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate. He explained how his grandfather had to quit school in third grade to pick cotton.
“Our family went from cotton to Congress in one lifetime,” Scott said. “There are millions of families like mine across this nation ... full of potential seeking to live the American dream.”