Republicans are ‘invigorated’ by Trump at Texas convention

SAN ANTONIO — I’ve attended a number of political conventions over the years, none of which was as weird as the Republican Party of Texas’ convention in 2016.

That year, delegates gathered in Dallas in May, about a week after Donald Trump became their party’s presumptive presidential nominee. That wasn’t surprising, exactly. Trump, who announced his bid for the nomination in June 2015, had been the front-runner for the nomination all along, according to polls. And although U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz had made a valiant effort to keep Trump from racking up the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination, his chances of doing so were slim even before Trump trounced him in the May 3 Indiana primary.

Still, Cruz’s decision to suspend his campaign, in the wake of that defeat, effectively confronted Republicans with a scenario that struck them as both surreal and suboptimal. Many of the Texas Republicans who convened in Dallas days later were still reeling.

And the leaders of their party, for the most part, had little sympathy. “Unite to win!” was the theme of that year’s convention.

“Stop trying to shove Trump down our throats!” one grassroots activist told me.

“I love the Republican Party. That’s why I’m sad,” she continued.

Comments like that made me sad, too. I’ve never been devoted to either party — and I don’t think Republican activists or the wealthy donors who fund their operations are entitled to special consideration when the Texas Legislature is in session.

But the leaders of the Republican Party of Texas should have some respect for the grass-roots conservatives who have supported them over the years, surely. Many of those

conservatives were profoundly uncomfortable with Trump in 2016. So were many of the elected officials who spoke at the state convention that year. And yet most of those officials used their platform to exhort Texas Republicans to set aside any qualms and do their duty. Frankly, it was a bit cruel.

Calm convention

This year’s Republican Party of Texas convention, held last week in San Antonio, was a lesscharged affair.

“It’s been very quiet and civilized,” one delegate told me when I asked how it felt compared to previous years.

“People are more invigorated,” said another, who cited Trump’s election as the cause of the change.

Delegates were certainly less depressed than they were in 2016, and I’m happy to give Trump credit for that. Many Texas Republicans have been pleasantly surprised by his performance thus far, I think, because their expectations weren’t particularly high, and he has delivered on a few things, most notably when it comes to reshaping the judiciary.

“Lifetime appointments!” one delegate reminded me.

Still, the mood at the convention was a bit off, all things considered. My Republican sources insist that they are again cruising to victory in this year’s midterm elections and that statewide leaders like Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick will crush their Democratic opponents by double-digit margins, as they did in 2014.

Opening for Democrats

But Abbott and Patrick keep calling on us to “keep Texas red,” which suggests a bit of anxiety. And Abbott, who addressed the delegates Friday morning, raised some eyebrows by comparing himself to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “The Texas economy alone is larger than Russia, and that makes me more powerful than Putin,” Abbott said.

This was a joke, according to one exasperated Abbott supporter — and, moreover, the kind of gratuitously self-aggrandizing joke that Texans are known to appreciate. I could see that, once he pointed it out, but I found the comment puzzling. Putin has a surprising amount of power, considering that he’s the president of Russia. And although Abbott is the governor of Texas, he’s also a supporter of Trump, who doesn’t like it when people pick on Putin, for some reason.

And although Republicans might sweep this year’s statewide elections again, some of the conservatives who attended this year’s convention might consider that a pyrrhic victory.

“You can always count on Texas Democrats to do the wrong thing,” said one friend, who explained that he was rooting for them to become more competitive so that Texas Republicans would be forced to compete.

“There is an opening for them,” he continued. “Texas isn’t as conservative as it seems.”

Pro-Trump contest

I asked another pal to explain the divide between James Dickey, who was tapped on Friday to again chair the state party, and longtime activist Cindy Asche, who tried to unseat him.

Dickey was favored to win, as far as I could tell, and he seemed to be affiliated with the conservative wing of the party, but both he and Asche had been campaigning as the more conservative contender and the more loyal to Trump, which confused me.

“We’ve definitely become unmoored from the old ideological fault lines we used to have,” my friend explained.

“Now it’s just become whoever’s more proTrump, whatever that means,” he added.

That was the risk Texas Republican leaders took when they decided to rally around their party’s presidential nominee in 2016.