GOP embraces ‘law and order’ while downplaying pandemic: 6 takeaways from Trump’s convention
President Donald Trump unleashed a harsh series of attacks against Joe Biden Thursday night, casting his Democratic opponent as “the destroyer of American greatness” and framing the November election as a bitterly divisive clash between two irreconcilable slices of America.
“This election will decide whether we will defend the American way of life, or whether we allow a radical movement to completely dismantle and destroy it,” Trump said in a 71-minute address accepting the GOP nomination.
Trump’s sweeping address capped a Republican National Convention that veered between a fusillade of incendiary attacks meant to rouse the president’s base and targeted stagecraft designed to improve his standing with voters of color and suburban women.
The president delivered the speech from the White House South Lawn adorned with large campaign banners and before an estimated crowd of 1,500 with few masks and limited social distancing despite the ongoing pandemic. Democrats charged it was not only unsafe, but an illegal abuse of taxpayer funds.
Reading from a teleprompter, the 74-year-old Trump portrayed Biden’s long record in Washington as a series of “catastrophic betrayals and blunders,” but also dedicated significant time to defending his first-term record accomplishments of revamped trade deals, the approval of new federal judges and the relocation of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.
Trump also attempted to sketch out general goals of a second-term agenda, including creating 10 million jobs in 10 months and landing the first woman on the moon. He pledged that a coronavirus vaccine would be available before the end of the year “or maybe even sooner.”
The conclusion of the conventions marks the unofficial sprint into the two-month homestretch of an unorthodox campaign, in which Trump is again battling from an underdog position.
Here are six takeaways from the 2020 Republican National Convention:
All in on ‘law and order’
If the convention’s messaging is any guide, the Trump campaign has settled on its predominant line of attack against Biden into the fall.
Rather than question Biden’s cognitive abilities by casting him as “Sleepy Joe,” as they tried at the start of the summer, Republicans are primarily portraying him as someone who would permit mob rule.
No attack was hurled more vividly and vehemently throughout the convention than the charge that Democrats are not only weak on “law and order,” but are actively trying to undermine the safety and security of Americans.
“Your vote will decide whether we protect law-abiding Americans, or whether we give free reign to violent anarchists, agitators, and criminals who threaten our citizens,” Trump said in laying out the case against Biden, describing his opponent’s public safety stands as the most dangerous of his entire platform.
The theme only gained more force through a string of speakers who preceded Trump on Thursday night.
New York City police union head Pat Lynch excoriated Democrats as enemies of law enforcement. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani warned that Biden a presidency would bring about an intensified crime wave “from cities and towns to suburbs and beyond.” And the parents of a daughter kidnapped and killed by ISIS in 2013 recalled they never heard from Biden when he was vice president and claimed she would still be alive today if Trump had been president when she was captured.
Many of Trump’s claims about Biden’s were outright fabrications or gross exaggerations for political theater. But in some ways the core of the speech was a return to vintage Trump of 2016, who favored hard-line views on crime and immigration over optimistic pronouncements about the future.
The pandemic takes a backseat
The coronavirus pandemic is the most pressing issue of the 2020 campaign, but it didn’t feel that way at the GOP convention.
Rather than make a convincing argument that Trump has responded well to the crisis, Republicans this week chose instead to mostly ignore the issue altogether. When the coronavirus did come up, speakers touted his restrictions on travel from China or made promises that a vaccine could arrive as soon as this year.
“We will defeat the virus and the pandemic and emerge stronger than ever before,” Trump said Thursday, in a speech that had a single section devoted to his administration’s response to the coronavirus but otherwise cast its focus elsewhere.
But over the course of 10 hours of programming, those defenses were infrequent. No speech captured the convention’s approach better than the one delivered Tuesday by Larry Kudlow, Trump’s top economic adviser, who conspicuously spoke of the pandemic’s effects in the past tense before pivoting to the economy — even as more than 1,000 Americans per day die from COVID-19.
It’s easy to imagine a president (in an alternate timeline) making their coronavirus response the centerpiece of their re-election pitch. Instead, the public’s negative view of Trump’s handling of the pandemic is forcing him to try and change the subject — not an easy task when nearly every Americans’ daily routine continues to be affected by the coronavirus.
Emphasizing ‘cancel culture’ over economic issues
For months, the polling number that’s left Democratic operatives with pits of anxiety has been Trump’s advantage on the economy.
It appeared yet again in a recent survey of Pennsylvania. Of the nine issues tested with registered voters in the battleground state, the only one Trump held an edge on was pocketbook concerns.
Yet for four nights, the economic case for Trump’s re-election played second fiddle to a simmering culture war, which Pence framed Wednesday as a harrowing choice over “whether America remains America.”
From the gun-touting Missourians Patricia and Mark McCloskey warning of “anarchy in the streets,” to Kimberly Guilfoyle invoking “discarded heroin needles in parks,” to South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem describing the fleeing of American cities due to “looting, chaos, destruction and murder,” speakers sought to stroke voters’ worst fears while pledging that Trump would restore “law and order.”
It’s a case that could hold some sway with skeptical suburban voters as civil unrest unfolds once again in Wisconsin this week, but it may also have left Trump’s best card to play on the table. The Pennsylvania poll found that voters’ concerns over their personal finances jumped 10 points in the past month.
No more ‘no Mr. Nice Guy’
The pardon of a reformed convict, a naturalization ceremony for five immigrants and personal testimony about calling to check in on a future aide after her mastectomy.
Convention organizers strived to show their audience flashes of a Trump that is different than the one that’s portrayed in the media — a man who, despite his combative instinct, is actually full of empathy and compassion, particularly behind the scenes.
Notably, the case was often made by Republicans of color and top female officials in the administration. It was an effort to also undercut criticism that the president is racist or a misogynist, which the GOP hopes will serve to allay concerns of skeptical white voters, including suburban women that have abandoned the party in droves, as well as help the president make inroads with voters of color, particularly young men of color, that historically have voted overwhelmingly Democratic.
But pitching Trump as a warm and kind figure may be difficult for voters to square with Trump’s daily Twitter and TV missives, which are filled with insults, grievances, threats and malice.
Attempting to reinvent Trump in this way also belies one of his most predominant messages since his 2016 run for president: That he’s a tough guy who won’t get rolled by adversaries. His campaign even aired an ad last year proclaiming: “He’s no Mr. Nice Guy.”
Blurring lines between official business and partisan politics
This week’s convention will be remembered for the unprecedented way the Trump campaign used government buildings, Cabinet secretaries, White House staff and even the president’s constitutionally enshrined powers as part of a political show, often eliminating the distinction between official governing and explicit campaigning.
Never before has a convention featured the president signing an official pardon or shown the acting secretary of Homeland Defense conducting a naturalization ceremony — both done from official White House grounds. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo addressed the convention while on an official visit to Israel, and Melania Trump gave her speech from the White House’s Rose Garden.
The overlap was most egregious Thursday, when Trump held a campaign-style rally from the White House to deliver his acceptance speech. White House officials insist all these actions were legal, though critics have called them blatantly inappropriate and illegal.
They weren’t the only missteps this week from GOP officials, who had to scramble to set up the convention after the pandemic scuttled plans to hold it first in Charlotte and later Jacksonville. For instance, one speaker was removed from the program after tweeting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories while another speaker signaled support on social media for restricting a woman’s right to vote.
They’re the kind of mistakes absent from an event that, in normal times, is carefully prepared.
Ratings on the decline
Were the Democratic and Republicans conventions full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?
TV ratings for both mostly virtual gatherings were down dramatically from previous conventions, as both parties grappled with how to reconceive the quadrennial event at a time of social distancing. The TV ratings for the GOP convention were even lower than the previous week’s Democratic programming, a sign, perhaps, that viewers had grown tired of a format that traded big crowds and hearty applause for speeches in front of empty rooms and pre-recorded videos.
Post-convention polling bumps were already an overrated phenomenon in modern elections. But given the further decline in interest this year, and that Biden’s numbers haven’t noticeably moved since last week, it seems unlikely that the conventions will do much to change the trajectory of a race that has been remarkably stable.
Each party’s respective base, of course, will be more galvanized than before. And the arguments outlined during each convention will play a big role from now until Election Day. But that may be all that comes from these eight nights of politics.
This story was originally published August 27, 2020 at 11:47 PM with the headline "GOP embraces ‘law and order’ while downplaying pandemic: 6 takeaways from Trump’s convention."
