Don’t expect any ‘vote your conscience’ moments at 2020 RNC
The Republican National Convention kicked off on Monday-and some Texas Republicans had made other plans for the evening.
“I don’t care to watch much of the Trump National Convention. I watched hockey instead,” said a longtime GOP operative, who declined to be named.
He wasn’t alone. President Donald Trump has often poohpoohed his tepid poll numbers by insisting that his supporters constitute a “silent majority.” We’ll find out if that’s so on Election Day. But his poll numbers are indeed tepid, even in Texas: a new poll from Public Policy Polling, for example, finds Trump trailing former VicePresident Joe Biden by one point in the state. And early numbers from the nation’s three broadcast networks show that the number of Americans who tuned in for Monday night’s speeches was smaller than the number who did the same last week for the opening night of the Democratic National Convention.
Republicans in Texas, specifically, may have found it hard to stomach the proceedings, which were broadcast from Washington,
D.C., after the coronavirus forced convention planners to move most of the festivities online.
Four years ago, the state had an outsized role at the Republican National Convention, thanks to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, the runner-up for the party’s presidential nomination that year. Cruz racked up victories in enough states to earn a speaking slot at the convention that year, and used his time to pointedly avoid endorsing Trump.
“Vote your conscience,” Cruz said onstage in Cleveland, eliciting howls of outrage from Trump’s supporters, some of whom were so rowdy that security had to escort the senator and his wife, Heidi, from the arena.
The backlash was striking in part because Texas is, after all, the nation’s largest red state — and its 38 electoral votes are absolutely crucial to Trump’s prospects in 2020. But the lineup for this year’s convention makes
it clear that, four years after Trump shocked the Republican establishment by becoming the party’s presidential nominee, the GOP itself has been remade in his image, for better or worse.
Delegates over the weekend decided not to adopt a new party platform. In lieu of doing so, they adopted a resolution stipulating that “the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the president’s America-first agenda.”
Overall, Texans are underrepresented at this year’s convention, as they were at last week’s Democratic National Convention.
A coveted Wednesday night speaking slot has been allotted to U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, who was elected to represent Texas’s 2nd Congressional District in 2018 and quickly endeared himself to conservatives yearning for a rightwing analogue to the freshman congresswoman from New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
There are probably some such conservatives in Crenshaw’s district, which was previously represented by the widely well regarded former Republican judge Ted Poe.
But Crenshaw is facing a credible challenge this year from Democrat Sima Ladjevardian, and it’s debatable whether he can expect much of a boost from his convention speech.
Crenshaw’s constituents, like most people in southeast Texas, will likely spend Wednesday evening bracing for the impact of Laura, which is currently expected to make landfall around 1 a.m. Thursday as a Category 3 hurricane.
Other than that, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick got some airtime Monday, when he pledged the state’s delegates to Trump as part of his formal re-nomination.
Patrick, Trump’s campaign chair in Texas, described the president as his friend and “the only hope that every American in this country has for true liberty and true freedom and true opportunity.”
The convention’s focus on Trump himself, rather than conservative principles or rising stars in the party, may seem like a missed primetime opportunity.
“The Republican convention speeches were excellent,” said state Sen. Brandon Creighton, who represents parts of Montgomery, Harris, Chambers, Jefferson and Galveston counties.
He singled out Florida businessman Maximo Alvarez, football great Herschel Walker, U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley for praise.
“The Democrats made a case for why we live in a terrible country and why socialism would be the solution,” Creighton continued. “Republicans validated why this country is the greatest nation on earth, why this Republic is strong and blessed and how we can all work together to continue improving it.”
He has a point. There were some odd speeches at the RNC Monday evening, including a notably impersonal one from the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and an bizarrely theatrical one from former Fox News personality Kim Guilfoyle, Trump Jr.’s girlfriend.
“They want to destroy this country and everything that we have fought for and hold dear,” Guilfoyle said of the Democrats, shaking her fist and enunciating very clearly.
“They want to steal your liberty, your freedom,” she continued, her volume rising, until she wrapped up her speech with both arms outstretched, as if summoning some sort of spirits from somewhere.
Other speakers, however, were able to more effectively evoke the principles Republican leaders used to espouse, before Trump became their all-consuming priority.
Scott, for example, spoke movingly about the discrimination his grandfather faced, and the pride he would feel in his grandson’s political career.
“He lived to see his grandson become the first African American to be elected to both the United States House and Senate," Scott said. "Our family went from cotton to Congress in one lifetime.”
His was a positive message about opportunity and progress which might well resonate with Americans who are skeptical of the Democratic agenda, but also fed up, after these past four years, with Trump’s personal grievances.