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The Party’s Over--For Now

Chris Krohn
Monday July 25, 2016 - 10:20:00 AM

The party’s over. Long live the Republican Party. 

Or is it a case of mistaken identity, and to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the party’s death are greatly exaggerated. 

If it was the passing of a political party, then what was that on the elevated stage surrounded by so many lights and mirrors this past Thursday night in Cleveland? 

The Republican Party has been through political change before. It’s 162-years old, but the political shape-shifting that’s taken place at this convention has left dozens, if not hundreds, of the party’s conservatives and moderates on the sidelines horrified at a party they do not recognize. 

With the nomination-coronation of Donald John Trump here in Cleveland by an enthralled and near delirious GOP faithful, we now have a candidate for President of the United States like no other in this nation’s history. Businessman, huckster, and showman, now he is also the national noodge on sending back immigrants to Mexico, raising trade tariffs on China, and barring Moslems from entering the country. 

Not since Lincoln and Reconstruction, not since Barry Goldwater’s 1964 insurgent “extremism in defense of liberty is no vice” speech, and surely not since Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy, which perfected George Wallace’s segregationist populism, have we seen anything like a Trump-Mike Pence ticket. 

Folks, this has not been Ronald Reagan’s “morning in America” campaign either. The mood has been dark and gloomy this week over the birthplace of rock ‘n’ roll. There’s been a constant drumbeat of what’s wrong in America, that terrorism and police shootings are all Hillary Clinton’s fault, and how if you elect the prophets-of-profit Republicans all will be well again. 

“We will make America great again,” they kept saying. 

But if the Trump-Pence ticket loses this November, will the Republican brand be left atop the ash heap of history? If they win, a political party metamorphosis on a Grand Old Party scale will have taken place, completely revamping one of our country’s two major parties. 

America has had a front row seat this week on what an extreme party makeover might look like. It was reality TV by the lake. 

Remember, the Bush Father and Sons’ wing was dispatched early-on in the campaign, and in a very personal way. The party’s standard-bearers in 2008 and 2012, John McCain and Mitt Romney, never made it to see Lake Erie this week. Even Sarah Palin, who endorsed Trump very early in the campaign, and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio were no-shows. Even former Presidential candidate and Ohio Gov. John Kasich was nowhere to be seen, and this was his state. 

Out of the distant past emerged only 93-year old Bob Dole, and given no stage time he could only sit with the Kansas delegation and watch his party’s self-immolation, or maybe he was betting on a historic reinvention. Not a single old-school face was near the convention stage during four nights of often divisive, bellicose verbal combat. 

But taken as a whole it was often nothing short of pure entertainment, far from the tightly scripted movie that the often hapless campaign manager Paul Manafort had hoped. Each day a new and uncontrollable storyline would emerge from inside Camp Trump. 

The most noteworthy tale of intrigue was Melania Trump’s plagiarizing of a Michelle Obama speech in 2008. It was still being parsed when day three arrived and the new narrative was the Ted Cruz long-winded non-endorsement of Trump. What followed was one of the most caustic group moments during the convention: several thousand people booed Cruz off the Quicken Loans Arena stage. With ideological havoc about to break out, in came VP nominee, Mike Pence who delivered near-flawless oratory. Seeking to cover Trump’s weakened rightward flank he began his speech, “I’m a Christian, a Conservative, a Republican, in that order.” But it was likely not enough to overcome the Cruz stabbing of the Donald’s back. 

Perhaps the only glue that held the Republican stage presence together was a unified bash-the-hell-out-of-Hillary theme. From former New York mayor and presidential contender, Rudy Giuliani's red meat calls for more police and more fire and brimstone to rain down upon ISIS, to Lt. Col. Mike Flynn’s blood-curdling crowd-whooping “U-S-A” chants, and to all of the Trump children’s similar paeans to their “father” nobody, with the possible exception of Melania Trump, missed an opportunity to scold, bloody or just plain berate the other party’s presumptive presidential nominee. Her emails, Benghazi, and even Whitewater and Vince Foster were brought up. Nothing was out of bounds. In fact, there were nights when minute-long chants of “Lock her up” would frequently interrupt speakers at the podium. 

The California delegation sitting in front of the stage was perhaps the most vocal inside the Q. They received a good spot near the stage, and in the middle of one of their innumerable standing ovations for speakers I asked one of the delegates if Trump could win the Golden State this fall. “Yeah, like he’s got like a five-percent chance,” she responded with a sly grin. 

I offer four examples of how this new Trump Republican Party has changed the course of political history. Without a doubt this group does things differently. This new party has been unfolding since seventeen candidates stood right on this very stage almost a year ago. 

Remember, Trump is the first Republican Party presidential nominee since Dwight D. Eisenhower never to have held previous political office. But Trump, unlike Ike, never spent any time in the military. Number two, Mike Pence the VP candidate said “the heroes of my youth were John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King.” Enough said. Number three, on the final night of the convention PayPal co-founder, Peter Thiel was wildly cheered by a packed arena when he talked of being “proud to be gay.” And finally, Ivanka Trump, seeking to salvage any credibility her father might have with women said that her father would champion equal pay for women and “quality affordable childcare” as well. 

These themes were not part of any of Bush, McCain or Romney campaign. While it is clear that the current Team Trump may be grumpier, more obnoxious, outspoken and blunt than previous campaigns, it has also proved to be bolder in its willingness to embrace some of the Democratic Party’s bread and butter social issues. What is also clear from this reporter’s view after more than forty interviews and over one hundred conversations with Republicans inside and outside the convention arena during the week of pomp and spectacle, lying and deception, is that if the Trump organization can carry out even a mediocre political ground game, then Hillary Clinton and the Democrats are in serious trouble come this November. 

If Reagan was the Teflon president, Trump is a new and improved version given that he has received only mild castigation for his numerous insults of women, minorities, along with rants against the press and his fellow candidates. On Friday, Trump had to take another swipe at Cruz, even going so far as to say his Wednesday speech might signal the end of Cruz’s political career. (On another hand, it may very well have been the beginning of his 2020 presidential campaign.) 

What was perhaps most stunning to this observer during this convention was the raucous and rude tenor of voices, not only on the stage but coming from many delegates on the floor. In the last three national political conventions I’ve attended it was rare to see and hear such non-stop rancor. 

The continuous chants of “build the wall,” “USA,” “Trump, Trump, Trump,” and the most prevalent one of all, “Lock her up,” were usually shouted in defiance often exuding a fierce kind of pent up hostility. If Republicans sought to murder political correctness, they took out civility, discretion and reason along with it. Compassionate conservativism was left in the arena parking lot on most evenings. These 4000-plus delegates and alternates wanted change, and yelling and screaming was definitely in style. 

After Cleveland we may be left with several Republican mini-parties. The Trump-Pence current brand is on top for now; the moderate-conservatives led by the Bushes and a few old neo-cons are now left to mope; the moderate-light party of McCain and Lindsey Graham is fading fast; and the religious conservatives led by Cruz will remain strong but diminished because of Cruz’s odd behavior. 

A fifth-wheel party candidacy might be in the cards for Ohio’s, Kasich. Party mainstays like Nikki Haley, Joni Ernst, and Marco Rubio most likely have their eyes set on 2020 as well. The big losers this year are Governor’s Chris Christie and Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and the Bushes. They have all been marginalized, down and maybe out. 

What none of the sixteen candidates, the entire Republican establishment, and especially the Bushes can back away from is pretending that Donald Trump is somehow an aberration on the Republican landscape, something not of their own creation. 

He is not an alien Republican who just showed up one day wanting to hijack your party and run for president. Trump is a creation of the past forty years, at least since Reagan, of the lack of bipartisanship, the attitude that climate change is a myth, the general underfunding of most programs targeted for children, race-baiting populism, cold warrior fury rechanneled toward the war on terror, and the shrinking of government so it’s small enough to drown in a toilet as Grover Norquist once proudly opined. It must not be conveniently dismissed or forgotten that these misguided policies have yielded up the Trump nomination.