This might be Trump’s Republican Party for many years

This might be Trump’s Republican Party for many years

In this one moment, Trumpism felt less like a passing phase for Republicans, and more like a long-term passing of the torch, toward a more nationalist party.

Mitch McConnell, perhaps the party’s most powerful figure over the last two decades, was booed mercilessly on Monday at the Republican National Convention, in Milwaukee. 

The Republican Senate leader was drowned out while trying to register the primary results for his state of Kentucky in the presidential nomination roll call. Nancy Pelosi would hardly have received a worse reaction from this crowd.

About an hour later, out walked Sen. J.D. Vance onto the same convention floor. And one song was played over the arena loudspeaker, again and again, on a loop, as Donald Trump’s running mate worked the celebratory room.

That song was country legend Merle Haggard’s America First with lyrics complaining about the U.S. helping the world — exporting democracy, building roads and bridges elsewhere — while needing help at home.

Trump’s selection of running mate seems intended to entrench this worldview for years to come. It may be shamefully premature to speculate about the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, but Vance may well lead the party into the 2030s.

The first-term Ohio senator shares Trump’s opposition to arming Ukraine, free-market trade and asylum-seekers, and has also proposed more robust business regulations.

There are implications for Canada: If Trump wins this election, Ottawa could find itself under intense pressure to boost defence spending and to negotiate exemptions from new tariffs, not to mention other trade issues. 

It’s also notable this week’s convention features speakers delivering once-unimaginable messages for a Republican gathering — union leaders have bashed big business, others have bashed NATO — as the party’s centre of gravity shifts toward populism and nationalism.

Perhaps tellingly, the party’s past is under-represented at this convention. Not a single living Republican president, presidential candidate, vice-president or vice-presidential candidate is speaking in Milwaukee.

One conservative commentator quipped that the torch has been passed from the philosophy of Ronald Reagan to that of the Trump-like Pat Buchanan.

And that’s a good thing in the view of some attendees.

Asked to explain the booing of McConnell, one 22-year-old mentioned Reagan. And he didn’t mean it as a compliment, which a few years ago might have been viewed here as political apostasy.

“He’s still with the old guard,” said Garrett Weldin of Delaware, referring to McConnell. “Sort of a Reaganite is what I would refer to him as.”

He said the old guard should learn to read the room; and the reason McConnell got booed, he said, is members no longer feel he represents the base.

Weldin said he’s thrilled by the choice of Vance as the vice-presidential candidate, who he said better represents his values. 

In any case, McConnell is resigning as the party’s leader in the Senate after the November elections, while Vance seems likely to play a leading role for years.

The choice of running mate divided Trump’s circle across ideological lines. There was a vicious power-struggle between nationalists like Tucker Carlson who favoured Vance, versus internationalists who favoured Sen. Marco Rubio or North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum. 

The winning side argued that Vance not only better represented the MAGA movement, but also made an eye-poppingly gory appeal — according to the New York Times, Carlson told Trump that, if he picked Rubio or Burgum, U.S. intelligence agencies might kill him to make one of them president.

One delegate from Ohio in his mid-50s said he felt bad to hear McConnell booed. “I don’t think he deserved that,” Tom McCabe said.

“Mitch McConnell’s done a lot for this party.”

But he agrees that Vance is a solid choice who represents the Republicans’ future.

“Our party is a Trump party now. It started in ’15 and ’16 and he solidified the hold,” he told CBC News at the Milwaukee convention.

“I think Donald Trump changed our party. It’s more – you can call it populism, it is. I think Vance is a great transition to this younger generation.”

Meanwhile, a longtime Republican, watching from his home in Virginia, was disheartened by what he was witnessing at the convention.

Brian Riedl is a financial policy expert who has worked for presidential candidates, senators and conservative think-tanks.

He calls himself a proud Reagan-style free-market Republican and worries about the trajectory of his party.

He feels like younger conservatives are buying into unfair stereotypes about the Reagan years, not appreciating the miraculous economic turnaround they helped spur.

He said the same of the attacks on McConnell, who, Riedl says, has spent decades getting conservative judges confirmed and bills passed, while blocking Democrats.

“A lot of Republican voters and delegates get too much of their political information from tweets and angry speeches,” he said.

“They simply judge Republican conservatism by how bombastic it is rather than what it accomplishes. Virtually every conservative accomplishment of the past 20 years has Mitch McConnell’s fingerprints on it…

“[But] he is seen as a weak sellout compared to blowhard lawmakers who do nothing but tweet and give speeches.”

Riedl lamented that there’s nothing in the Republican platform about controlling the country’s finances, which he said are trending toward a debt crisis.

There’s nothing about increasing revenue or cutting spending. Instead, he said, it’s talk of tariffs while bashing trade, international alliances and corporations.

“The Reagan GOP in the 1980s would wake up today and wonder, ‘Who are these Democrats?'” he said.

“On economic policy I would argue that we’ve got two Democratic parties.” 

Riedl said U.S. voters aren’t being told the truth by either party about the real risk of a fiscal crisis within a few years.

“We’re screwed,” he said.

The former top Republican in Congress espouses a more sanguine view of the party’s situation.

In a long question-and-answer session with foreign reporters at the convention, Kevin McCarthy spoke, in detail, of his view that the U.S. should keep supporting Ukraine, comparing the current global situation to that of the 1930s.

He said there’s still a lot of the old Reagan party in the current GOP. In fact, he noted, Trump’s own slogan, “Make America Great Again,” essentially copies Reagan, who in 1980 campaigned on the slogan “Let’s Make America Great Again.” 

But he said every party adjusts to deal with the challenges of the time. 

These days, Republicans, and Democrats, are both fixated on reshoring manufacturing jobs, after years of outsourcing that has devastated communities, left the U.S. dependent on China for critical goods, and coincided with a spike in deaths of despair and a lower working-class life expectancy.

In addition, McCarthy said, it’s normal for different strands of thought to co-exist in one party, and this is true of Republicans.

“Each party — if they’re honest — has more than one party inside it,” McCarthy said. 

“So we’re going to have different beliefs, probably in foreign policy, on states’ rights.… Those are healthy to have. And I still believe the fundamental principles of Reagan are still the [Republican] establishment.”

Published at Sun, 14 Jul 2024 01:06:12 +0000

First, Biden fumbled. Then, Trump was shot at. What it all means for the Democrats going forward

In many elections, there’s a pivotal moment that appears to signal potential doom for one party or another. For the Democrats and presumptive nominee U.S. President Joe Biden, there have been several of these moments in the past three weeks alone — and the election is still more than four months away. 

The party was already in turmoil after Biden faltered in the first presidential debate last month against his Republican rival, former president Donald Trump.

Biden, who is 81 and the oldest presidential candidate in U.S. history, has struggled to put that performance behind him — despite a number of appearances, news interviews and a press conference — and he’s facing calls to step aside for a younger and more dynamic candidate.

Now, there are questions about how Biden’s campaign will take on Trump politically after he survived an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally Saturday.

The Democrats are now in a tricky position, especially with Republicans more galvanized than ever in their support for Trump. Quelling internal division over Biden is one thing — sorting out how to proceed while balancing tone and scrutiny following the shooting may determine the outcome of the election.

“The more Democrats can make this election a referendum on Donald Trump rather than a referendum on Joe Biden’s fitness to serve another four years, the better off they will be,” said Steven Webster, an associate professor of political science at Indiana University.

Biden on a mission

Biden says he has no intention of leaving the ticket, and he’s on a mission to prove he’s a firebrand capable of leading the country for another four years.

In contrast to his June 27 debate performance, Biden was punchy and energetic in a scripted speech at the NAACP national convention in Las Vegas Tuesday. 

That followed an interview with NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt Monday evening, where he faced questions about his mental acuity — something he insisted is “pretty damn good.” 

Biden reiterated his track record as president and said he should be judged on that. 

But that doesn’t necessarily assuage concerns within his party at a time when Trump is riding a swell of Republican support following the attempt on his life and the announcement of his vice-presidential candidate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance. 

‘Strong and wrong beats weak and right’

The New York Times reported Tuesday that a prominent House Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, who’s running for a seat in the Senate, privately told his supporters at an event on Saturday that the party will suffer significantly in all races on election day if Biden remains on the ballot. 

It’s a stronger tone than Schiff has taken publicly, but it echoes concerns raised by party members (at least 19 House representatives and one senator) and fundraisers, including actor George Clooney. 

Bruce Heyman, the former U.S. Ambassador to Canada under Barack Obama, also sees Biden’s candidacy as a liability. 

The president, he said in a Tuesday interview with CBC Radio’s The Current, was already trailing Trump in key swing states, and his debate performance only made matters worse. 

Heyman believes Biden is a competent leader, but the former ambassador says he’s frightened by the idea that “strong and wrong beats weak and right,” a phrase he credited to former Democratic president Bill Clinton.

Trump, despite having his ear grazed by a bullet in Saturday’s attack, has tried to demonstrate his strength, even stopping to pump his fist in the air to a cheering crowd as Secret Service agents hurried him off stage. He then showed up on the first night of the Republican convention with a bandaged ear.

Biden, meanwhile, has been dogged by footage showing him struggling to answer questions during the debate and confusing the names of world leaders and his own vice-president in public appearances since then. 

Internal pressure

Despite all the negative attention, Webster says the only way Biden won’t be at the top of November’s ballot is if he withdraws himself.

The Indiana University professor says the president has enough delegates behind him to secure the nomination, even if a growing number of party members want a different candidate.

Webster said it would take pressure from Democratic heavyweights like Obama and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for Biden to pull himself out of the race. 

There is some indication that at least one of them is making efforts to get Biden off the ticket, with Politico reporting Monday that Pelosi has been working behind the scenes since the debate to do just that.

Clock ticking for Biden to woo voters

For now, public calls for Biden to withdraw have quieted somewhat following Saturday’s shooting, which left one attendee dead and two others injured. Secret Service snipers also killed the suspected gunman.

Both candidates have cautioned that the heated rhetoric during the election campaign needs to cool off. 

Trump is no stranger to incendiary rhetoric, however, he has vowed to change the tone of his convention speech, slated for Thursday night, to talk about unity.  

And Biden told Holt he was wrong to tell donors to “put Trump in the bull’s-eye,” during an event in the days ahead of the assassination attempt, though he said he wouldn’t back down on telling the truth about his opponent. 

Webster says voters are more swayed by opposition to one candidate, which is why Democrats have tried to provoke fears about the prospect of another Trump presidency. 

“Put simply, an angry voter is a loyal voter,” he said.

But that’s where it gets complicated for the Democrats now, because Webster says they don’t want to appear as though they’re playing politics with the attempted assassination of Trump. 

“But at the same time, Democrats still want to push their message that Donald Trump is a threat to American democracy, and that he would be dangerous if given another four years in the White House,” said Webster, the author of the book American Rage: How Anger Shapes Our Politics.

Pollster and political strategist Frank Luntz, on the other hand, says it’s time for Biden to put more effort into selling his vision for the future rather than criticizing Trump. 

He says Trump already has a base that’s excited to vote for him and only needs to convince Republican voters to turn out on election day, Nov. 5. 

“That’s not the case with the Biden campaign,” Luntz said in an interview with CBC News Network’s Power and Politics. “The Biden voters are demoralized.” 

He says that if Biden is indeed still in the race next month, Democrats will need “one hell of a convention” to garner support for the president, energize their voters and persuade them to show up at the polls. 

“I don’t know if that’s possible in these 110 days between now and the election,” he said.

Published at Wed, 17 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000