Republicans opened their national convention with a surprising sense of serenity. Wandering the floor last night at Fiserv Forum, in Milwaukee, I heard nothing about the key theme of Donald Trump’s reelection campaign—retribution. People swayed and sang along to a live rendition of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” as Trump, a white bandage affixed to his ear, 48 hours after surviving an assassination attempt, held court next to his just-announced running mate, J. D. Vance.
“Everything is in place now,” Cindy Siddoway, the Idaho GOP national committeewoman, told me. “People are enthusiastic. It’s been kind of a tragic week, so this is kind of a high point.”
It was a stark juxtaposition with eight years ago, when Trump first took control of the Republican Party in Cleveland. Back then, he was an insurgent set on destruction, and the convention had a darkness to it. The GOP was fixated on twin bogeymen: the outgoing first Black president and his possible successor, the potential first woman president. But now that Republicans are going up against a frail 81-year-old incumbent who is trailing Trump in every swing state, the vibe has shifted.
Republicans I spoke with yesterday painted Joe Biden not so much as a seismic threat to their identity (like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton) but as a weak opponent with bad policies whom they will crush without great difficulty. In my conversations, I still heard warnings that a second Biden term would “destroy” America and turn it into any number of synonyms for hellscape. But when I asked Republicans what they actually thought would happen if Biden won this fall, I didn’t hear many QAnon-style conspiracies. Unlike in 2016, and unlike on the Democratic side in 2024, members of the rank and file seem fairly relaxed and focused on quotidian, not existential, electoral issues.
This election will come down to a handful of swing states. In 2020, Georgia played a pivotal role in Biden’s Electoral College victory. Today, Biden is running about four points behind Trump in the state, and many observers believe that Republicans will easily flip it back to red this fall. I spoke with several Georgia delegates over the course of a few hours last night.
Rey Martinez, a Georgia state representative from the One Hundred and Eleventh District, told me that he’d immigrated to the United States from Cuba, and that his wife came from Chile. I asked him if Trump’s racist rhetoric against Mexicans, Venezuelans, and other members of the Latino community bothered him. No, he said; his primary focus was on more traditional campaign issues. Latinos, Martinez offered, are just like any other American voting bloc, in that they’re looking for lower inflation, better schools, and religious freedom. Voters like him and his wife, he said, earnestly believe in the American dream. Inflation has hindered their progress.
“A lot of Hispanics that I represent in Georgia are business owners—they own taquerias; they own Mexican restaurants,” Martinez told me. “What happens when the price of oil goes up?” Inflation “has really killed us,” he said. Another Georgia delegate, an 85-year-old named Alton Russell, told me that inflation and American energy independence are among his biggest concerns. “Biden will tell you that Trump is telling a lie,” he said. “But I know, in 2020 I was paying $1.85 a gallon for gas in Columbus, Georgia, where I live. It’s $3.30 now. You can’t tell me that that ain’t got something to do with Biden being president.”
Down in the lobby, I spotted Matt Schlapp, the chair of the American Conservative Union, the organization behind the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and its spin-offs around the world. Schlapp is a close ally of Trump’s and served as a strategist in George W. Bush’s administration. “I think the Democrats have very intentionally tried to vilify Trump and his supporters,” Schlapp told me—a failing strategy. “This is not a serious way to contend for the presidency,” he said. “I think they overplayed their hand. I think it was stupid.”
Some Democrats had naively hoped that January 6 would be “the final straw” on Trump for many Republicans. Last night, several attendees I spoke with rejected the idea that the storming of the Capitol was a violent attack at all, or that it should be deemed an insurrection. But even those who were sober-minded about that day seem to be sticking with Trump in 2024. Tim Lang, a New Hampshire state senator, told me that he had participated in New Hampshire events with former Vice President Mike Pence before Pence dropped out of the Republican primary race, and in that time, they had developed a friendship. I asked Lang if he had ever spoken with Pence about January 6—when a Trump-induced mob erected a gallows and sought to hang the then–vice president outside the Capitol. Yes, they had; he said he admired Pence’s courage, and that he thought Pence did the right thing in certifying the election results.
I asked Lang, who still considers Pence a friend, how he himself can support Trump, knowing what happened. “The thing about the Republican Party is we’re a ‘big tent’ party,” he said. He smiled. In no time, he, too, was talking about kitchen-table issues such as the economy, inflation, interest rates, and home costs—palatable, even mundane, talking points.
Perhaps the RNC’s overall relaxed atmosphere can be attributed to the fact that Trump is comfortably ahead of Biden. The president has been doing more interviews and events, including a one-on-one with NBC’s Lester Holt last night, but he hasn’t been able to reverse his position in the race or fully stymie questions about his acuity. Trump, meanwhile, just survived an assassination attempt with a raised fist. Fair or not, he appears strong, while Biden appears weak. And Democratic cries of 2024 potentially being “the last election” seem to be going nowhere.
Pete Hoekstra, the chair of the Michigan GOP (as well as a former congressman and Trump’s former ambassador to the Netherlands) batted away the idea that democracy is on the ballot this fall. “We’re having an election,” Hoekstra told me matter-of-factly. “We will decide who’s the next president by and through an election.” Attempts at sweeping rhetoric, he suggested, were proof that Democrats didn’t have foreign-policy or economic successes to highlight. “I find it a great attempt to transfer and morph the agenda to something that you can’t measure,” he said. Trump is on track to win Hoekstra’s state of Michigan—a building block of Biden’s “blue wall” in the upper Midwest. Hoekstra, like everyone else I spoke with, seemed at ease.
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