Republican party nominates Trump at platformless convention

For the first time in history, the National Republican Convention was held on the steps of the White House with an in-person ceremony ensuing during the nomination for the reelection of President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. SAM ANDRUS Photo Editor

The 2020 Republican National Convention (RNC) proceeded with few limitations over the course of Aug. 24 to 27, resulting in the nomination for the reelection of President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. Never declaring an official platform, the convention placed focus on Trump’s characteristics as a leader more so than his leading principles, utilizing anecdotes from friends and family as well as statistically analyzing Trump’s political decisions over the last four years.

“It’s very much Trump’s party right now and once it has become personalized in that way, it’s hard to reach out to moderates or independents using policy deals,” said John Compton, chair of the Political Science department at Chapman University. “It has to be more symbolic.”

Following the near-entirely virtual Democratic National Convention (DNC) only a week prior, the RNC proved a stark contrast in its hybrid format, with keynote speakers on the fourth night still assembling in person. Receiving criticism for possibly violating the federal ethics laws, Trump’s acceptance speech for his presidential nomination took place on the steps of the White House, with a wide gathering of unmasked supporters still making it out to the event. Even during the formal roll call on night two, the delegates from the 57 U.S. states and territories were tested for the coronavirus and conducted their nominations in person to maintain the authenticity of the long-standing tradition.

Despite the support, Trump’s acceptance speech, sitting at a whopping 19.5 million views, still trails well behind Democratic Nominee Joe Biden’s address to the DNC and nearly a third behind the success of his prior 2016 speech.

“To give some broader history, conventions have been becoming less and less important over the last 30 or 40 years,” Compton said. “Up until the 70s, there was real action at the convention. In many cases, it wasn’t clear who the nominee would be so that people would (want to) tune in and the networks would cover it much more than just primetime … (Now), it’s more kind of a coronation where the nominations are already decided and it’s just a series of speeches by prominent people.”

Despite a concession from life-long Democrat and Mayor of Eveleth, Minnesota, Robert Vlaisavljevich stating that Democrats can “no longer claim to be advocates of the working man,” the majority of speakers at the RNC were curated specifically for the contemporary GOP base. It even featured speaker Jane “Cissie” Graham Lynch to cater to the Republican white evangelical base, 81% of whom voted for Trump in the 2016 election. Endorsements spanned from a vast array of small business owners and agricultural workers to former NFL player Herschel Walker and Georgia State Rep. Vernon Jones.

Kentucky teenager Nick Sandmann, recently hired onto Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s reelection campaign, also made an on-screen appearance for night two of the event. Sandmann has been represented as an adamant Trump supporter in the media since a 2019 scandal in which CNN misreported Sandmann’s encounter with a Native American man, while wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat, as racist harassment. Chapman broadcast journalism professor and contributing editor to the Orange County Business Insider Pete Weitzner discussed the case in-depth with his students during the past spring semester, encouraging students to look beyond political affiliation and through the lens of the law.

“I do a little disclaimer at the start of the class that I’m going to show something kind of ribald, because there’s really no other way to talk about obscenity,” Weitzner told The Panther. “The Sandmann case is a big defamation case, but it kind of could be a precedent-setting case.”

Sandmann’s endorsement served as an attempt to further humanize Trump, in the wake of accusations that Biden is merely a “career-politician” in the President’s own words. Other supporters outlined Trump’s accolades in the realm of business, specifically dissecting his 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act which reduced the top corporate tax rate by 40% and provided reduced income taxes for many Americans. But in spite of his conservative-pleasing tax cuts, Trump’s modern fiscal policy greatly conflicts with foundational aspects of Republican economic policy, such as maintaining laissez-faire, or rather a society oriented under free trade and supply-side economics.

“It’s two philosophies: it’s lessening taxes and letting the markets and the individual have more decision-making versus the (Democratic) wing putting more power in the centralized government, starting with things like healthcare,” Weitzner said on the major differences between the economic values of the foundational Democratic and Republican parties.

Addressing plans to maintain economic momentum going into the next four year term, Trump also alluded to a “radical movement” occurring across the nation, clarifying his support for law enforcement in the midst of “violent anarchists, agitators and criminals who threaten our citizens” protesting across the nation against police brutality. Members of the police force, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and even the President of New York’s Police Benevolent Association Pat Lynch were in tow, cheering the President at the convention.

Although Trump reiterated that he had signed an executive order for police reform in June that incentivizes local departments to keep track of officers with “credible abuses,” his stance on favoring “blue lives” is clear. Insisting that Biden will call for complete police defunding and implement a socialist agenda, Trump’s speakers urged voters to cast their ballots in favor of Trump by the Nov. 3 election, in solace with law enforcement and the armed forces defending the nation’s peace.

“It really seems to be social issues that are doing the (polarization),” Compton said. “How you go about the economy or economic policy is not nearly as good of a predictor for support for Trump as how you feel about social issues, how you feel about civil rights issues, how you feel about gender issues … The broader story here is the transformation of the Republican Party.”