MILWAUKEE — From passing a party platform that deemphasized long-standing core conservative social issues to selecting anti-intervention populist Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, as his running mate, this week’s Republican convention underlined and bolded former President Donald Trump’s roadmap for taking back the White House.
Abortion, gun rights, and the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol have received little to no attention. The speaker lineup featured a union president, an OnlyFans model, and disaffected Black and Latino Democrats angry about crime and immigration, at all levels.
It wasn’t by chance. Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee, now fully under his control, are trying to appeal to traditionally Democratic-leaning constituencies that are disillusioned with the Republican Party, including working-class union members and relatively young black and Latino voters. ideological.
The convention marked the most direct appeal to them the party has ever made, bringing in speakers who were somewhat shocking to traditional GOP constituencies. This indicates that the Trump campaign believes it has a better chance of attracting these voters than of winning back the Trump-to-President Joe Biden crossover voters who left him in 2020 – most notably, the well-educated suburban white voters who cast a lot of votes. . votes for Nikki Haley in the 2024 Republican Party primaries.
“This is no longer your father’s Republican Party,” Mike Gonidakis, a Republican delegate from Ohio and president of Ohio Right to Life, told NBC News. “This is the Trump GOP now.”
Most Republican lawmakers and delegates who spoke to NBC News embraced what they saw as an effort to widen the tent, as opposed to an abandonment of some conservative policy goals.
“Of course, I would love to hear conversations about life every night,” Gonidakis said. “But we have to win to govern, and to govern we have to win, right? So what we need to do is broaden our appeal to people because it’s the long game, the strategy, of really bringing a bigger tent. Changing hearts and minds.”
These appeals were evident in both Trump and Vance’s speeches to convention attendees.
“Do you know who is being harmed most by the millions of people coming into our country?” Trump said. “The black population and the Hispanic population.”
A night earlier, Vance hit the other angle, railing against the North American Free Trade Agreement and corporate America.
“We need a leader who is not in the pocket of big business, but who is accountable to workers – both union and non-union,” Vance said. “A leader who will not sell out to multinational corporations, but who will defend American businesses and American industry. A leader who rejects Joe Biden [and] Kamala Harris’s ‘Green New Coup’ and fight to bring back our great American factories.”
A recent NBC News poll demonstrated the softness of the Biden coalition that Trump is trying to exploit. Overall, Trump led Biden by 2 points among voters in the new poll. Within the data, the survey showed that among voters under 30, Biden led by just 4 points. (He led voters under 30 by 24 points in 2020, according to NBC News exit polls.) Among black voters, Biden led by 57 points (after beating them by 75 points in 2020). Among Latino voters, Biden led by 16 points (after beating them by 33 points in 2020).
Democrats rejected Trump’s effort, especially his message aimed at black and Latino voters. Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison dismissed the release as “a series of lip service and photo opportunities from Trump,” adding that the convention included “insulting stereotypes — like arguing that black voters should support him because he is a criminal.”
Democrats also argued that Trump’s agenda when he was president was harmful to these voters and that, especially voters of color, they would see through their effort.
“Black voters are sophisticated and look for those who are fighting for them – they won’t be distracted by Trump’s off-brand sneakers or fast-food offerings, and they haven’t forgotten Trump’s record of harming our communities,” Sarafina Chitka said. a spokesperson for the Biden-Harris campaign.
The message was not completely uniform in reaching non-traditional Republican voters. At one point during his speech, Trump ripped in the head of the United Auto Workers days later giving a space to speak prominently to Teamsters boss Sean O’Brien. Immediately after Ric Grenell, a Trump foreign policy adviser who is gay, mentioned in his Wednesday speech that Trump “doesn’t care if you’re gay or straight, black, brown or white, or what gender you are.” , Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, took the stage to assert that under Trump “there were two genders.”
Trump sought to make similar appeals to these voters during the 2020 convention, but this week’s iteration marked his most forceful and revealing effort, especially because of who was speaking. Amber Rose, one OnlyFans model and performer, described initially doubting Trump’s sincerity until doing his own research. More than any other speaker, his presence signaled a willingness to put traditional conservative social issues on the back burner to better reach non-traditional voters.
“My message to you tonight comes from a humble place; the left told me to hate Trump,” she said. “And even worse, hating the other side, the people who support it. When you eliminate the lies, you realize the truth. American families were better off when Donald Trump was president.”
On the economic front, it was O’Brien’s speech that signaled an opening to bury some conservative orthodoxy in the economy, attacking the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable.
“I wasn’t sure how it would go,” Riley Moore, West Virginia state treasurer and one of the favorites to win a congressional seat this fall, said of O’Brien’s speech. “But I think that when he saw the reception he received here, it represented a very strong partnership for me at a national level. JD Vance literally encapsulates this shift. And I think this is happening fast. There will be a radical change for this Republican Party. It’s been that way since Trump was elected, but it will continue under Vance.”
Biden’s allies were quick to seize on the labor movement’s resistance to O’Brien’s speech. As he spoke, AFL-CIO official account posted: “Some would love for workers to take him at his word and forget what he did as president. But we don’t forget. And Project 2025 shows that he will pick up right where he left off: dissolving unions, gutting worker protections, and defunding entire parts of government that people rely on.”
Still, two labor sources said the political threat to Democrats is real, with one saying “far-right MAGA ideology” has some momentum and has rank-and-file union members. NBC News polling data shows the battle for voters in union households is tight, although Democrats still have an edge.
Meanwhile, Republicans in Milwaukee said the message struck the right balance between base interests and tentpole expansion.
“To quote Goldilocks, the temperature of the porridge is about right,” Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told NBC News. He added: “The working class in this country is [saying Democrats are] going too far to the left.
The tone was first set in crafting the Republican platform before the convention. Before pen was put to paper, Trump allies took an active role in fights over who would serve on the platform committee — an effort intended to stop conservatives from pushing the document too far to the right on abortion and intermarriage. same-sex platform pillars for years.
The concise platform, which Trump actively participated in crafting and editing, according to a source familiar with the process, included some language about abortion — but it was nowhere near as much as previous GOP platforms or what anti-abortion rights activists have said. promoted. for this time. And it made no mention of same-sex marriage. Other culture war issues that have gained momentum since the pandemic were included, such as the ban on transgender athletes participating in women’s sports.
There was still some disagreement regarding the path of the Republican Party convention.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, who was praised by O’Brien, said the platform hit home on the populist economic front and described O’Brien’s speech as “electric.” But he questioned why Republicans would distance themselves from traditional conservative social issues.
“I don’t see any reason to do that,” Hawley said, adding: “As Republicans, I think we should strongly advocate a pro-life position on principle, so this platform seems to me to dilute that. I just don’t know why. I don’t think there’s any reason for that.”
“I just think it’s an electoral error,” he added. “I don’t think it gives you anything. I think it hurts conservative voters, evangelicals and conservative Catholics, to compromise on this. And the same goes for marriage. I don’t understand the calculation, but I don’t think it’s sensible.”
But one person at a conservative think tank said he didn’t believe Trump would lose anything electorally if he backed away from these issues.
“Trump didn’t care much about these issues before 2016,” this person said. “He rebranded himself as caring about these issues. It was a way to get the evangelical vote. And once he got it, now he has it. He won’t lose control because of this. The number of passionate pro-life evangelicals who will stay home and not vote for Trump because he is wishy-washy on abortion is so small.”
Mike Elder, a delegate for the South Carolina Republican Party, said the change in messaging was smart to appear less “hardline.” He appreciated O’Brien and Rose’s speeches.
“We want to win,” he said, adding: “Trump has been through this before, he knows where he is winning and losing votes.”
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
