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RNC Night 4 Wrap-up
The last night of the Republican National Convention blew the past three days out of the water. The party unleashed a barrage of powerful moments, from heartbreaking to inspirational. Team Trump threw so much into it; by the end, I think I saw a kitchen sink tumbling across the White House lawn.
I’ll stick to the highlights or this post will be 5,000 words long. As with the rest of the convention, the RNC pushed hard for the African-American vote. White House advisor Ja’Ron Smith vouched for Trump’s character and the need for hard work. Alice Johnson, whose life sentence was commuted by the President, praised his groundbreaking support for criminal justice reform.
For being the most racisty racists in the history of racism, I’ve never seen a more diverse array of speakers at an RNC. It’s not even close.
The parents of Kayla Mueller, an American murdered by ISIS, gave a tearful thank you to Trump for meting out justice upon Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. An equally emotional moment was provided by Ann Dorn, the widow of retired Police Capt. David Dorn, who was killed by St. Louis rioters.
The RNC relentlessly criticized Democrat mayors and governors for coddling these rioters in blue cities across the country. As they did, DC rioters rolled out a guillotine with a Trump effigy and abused Black cops and the elderly. (Perhaps Mayor Bowser should list this as an in-kind contribution to Trump 2020.) Rudy Giuliani nuked New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio’s near destruction of the once-peaceful city as did the leader of the NYPD’s police union.
Several politicians were also present. The standout was Sen. Tom Cotton who recounted Democratic failures and Republican successes in defense and foreign affairs. Ivanka Trump lowered the volume with a platitude-rich speech. The remarks were pedestrian and would have worked better in an earlier segment.
Of course, the main event was President Trump himself. As with Biden, The Donald isn’t famed for stirring oratory. Nevertheless, he rose to the occasion with a well-crafted speech and minimal riffing. Where Biden’s acceptance barely hit 24 minutes, Trump’s clocked in at 70, second in length only to his 2016 convention speech.
The delivery was sober and subdued, cataloging his opponent’s failures over 47 years of public life and stressing that he was too weak to stand up to the radicalism of his party. He pounded on every weakness Biden has and assured voters he would harm our economy and our safety. Trump also bragged about his own record over the past four years with the many highlights never mentioned on the nightly news. As the speech closed, fireworks engulfed the Washington Monument in a patriotic display.
Kudos to the Republican National Committee for creating one of the best conventions I’ve seen, and doing it under the most difficult of circumstances.
While I write, totally unbiased journalists are shrieking across TV and social media with a level of hysterics rarely seen outside of a Bravo reality show. Can’t say I blame them: RNC 2020 was a complete success.
Published in Elections
What happened to Breonna Taylor was the one tragedy of all these deaths. The rest were self-inflicted by suspects defying the cops with or without weapons. If a police officer is going to arrest you, he is going to arrest you no matter how much you resist. The more you resist, the more it makes him need to use physical force to subdue you. The more physical you get while resisting . . . well, you get the picture.
I want to give credit where credit is due.
Trump did a good job in general in his speech. He went over the top a bit, but looking at just his speech, he did a good job.
Good on Trump. Trump last night was the President that I had hoped that he would grow into.
My fear level about Trump went down after his speech. In other words, Trump hasn’t won my vote but I am not wearing my “Republicans for Biden” t-shirt today, I am not planning to canvass for Biden this weekend, and I didn’t send more money to the Biden campaign after hearing Trump’s speech. So my intensity level has gone down. That is progress for Trump.
Know what I admire about you, Gary? Your ability to see something you might not be inclined to see (in this case, a good presentation by Trump) and a willingness to admit you’ve seen it – even in a forum where you’ve been very vocal about your opposition, and it would be very easy not to admit to seeing it. Seriously, I admire that.
My congressional district has the highest percentage of Native Americans in the nation. The most successful Republican to run in this district in twenty years went out of his way to praise Native Americans as “The First Americans.” He repeatedly referred to their proud history as veterans. He had active constituent services on the reservations. He never won a majority on the reservations but instead of being beaten by tens of thousands of votes on the reservations, he lost by only thousands of votes in each county. This was the margin of victory. The Native Voters didn’t prefer him, but they didn’t hate him with a white hot fire of a thousand suns. Some voted for him. Others didn’t feel the urgent necessity to get out to the polls.
Trump calming my nerves last night is a step forward for him. Good job. While I do not prefer Trump at this point, I could live with the new Trump. In other words, if we kept the new Trump, the world, as we know it, would not end.
I asked Peter (@peterrobinson) and James (@jameslileks)on the Ricochet podcast this morning to discuss the possibility of a landslide for Trump and a possible flipping of the House if the rioting in the streets continues. As you’ll see, Peter responded that there is a distinct possibility of that happening but wasn’t as sure about the House flipping until Scott ( @blueyeti) said that all that was needed to flip the House was 14 seats.
I’ll go one better. That in several states, some Democrat state representatives will flip party affiliation to Republican if the violence continues.
If Dems do not address rioting, they will have a huge problem. Biden needs a “Sister Souljah” moment.
It’s too late. If he speaks out forcefully against rioting he loses the votes of the radical Leftists who endorse the rioting and looting as “payback”. If he speaks out forcefully it only shines a light on the fact that the cities that are under siege have been run by Democrat politicians for decades. He’s in a no-win situation.
As Kamala Harris said to Stephen Colbert and Americans watching, “Beware, the protests will continue, even after Election Day.” She seemed almost giddy in saying it. Of course, if the “protests” were peaceful then Americans would have nothing to fear and would have no reason to “beware”. But that’s not what we’ve been witnessing for the past 3 to 4 months.
Kamala knows the protests will continue to be violent. She is a child of the radical left and has a more Leftist record in Congress than Bernie Sanders. She and other radical Leftist apparatchiks smell the opportunity to push old, senile Joe aside when it becomes evident that he is too cognitively dysfunctional to continue to be president should he win. But if the rioting and violence continues, the Democrats across the board stand to lose in a big way. There is, after all, historical precedent, for this…in 1968 and 1972.
If you want to check on World History knowledge, you need to consult World Forum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nUjymz9tnU
Trump being re-elected was not going to end the world, as we know it, even before last night’s speech.
Rand Paul this morning:
When you’ve pushed a Libertarian privacy advocate like Rand Paul to make a statement like this, you may just have gone too far. I suspect that the death threats directed at him from the DC mob last night weren’t as concerning to him as the death threats made against his wife.
George Will posted that in his WaPo column today. But the problem for Biden is that because mayors and governors in Blue states failed to crack down on the violence when it first started three months ago, and even tried to downplay the actions (Jenny Durkan’s “Summer of Love” comment in Seattle being the most obvious effort), the woke protestors are going to see it as a huge betrayal if Joe and all the other Democrats who were saying nothing or cheering them on suddenly decide they’re a problem that has to be dealt with right now…
…which then segues into what are the Democrats going to do. If they want to win swing voters, Biden’s probably going to have to do more than simply denounce the rioters, because he’s supposed to be the leader of the Democratic Party, which is also the party of the mayors and governors in the problem cities and states. Buzz words while the rioting continues likely won’t bring the swing voters over, but if the Democrats actually do lay the hammer down on their former Antifa and BLM allies, they risk the angry woke left refusing to turn out on Election Day for Joe and Kamala.
A vote for Biden is a vote for people who want to murder Rand Paul.
That is you never trumpers
Good, effective night for the RNC.
I was disappointed in Giuliani, though. He mentioned “the murder” of George Floyd. I would expect that from Democrats, but our team needs to be better. Conservatives need to stop running with this lie. All evidence points to Floyd dying of an overdose, not murder. We are innocent until proven guilty in this country, and Chauvin has yet to stand trial. This lie has real-life consequences and a lot of innocent people are getting hurt or killed because of it.
Please conservatives, stop spreading the left’s lie.
Makes me wonder who wrote Giuliani’s speech for him, and why.
Let’s not forget that the BernieBros promised to make the cities burn if their man was not nominated at their convention, or elected president. Sounds like premeditation to me.
We should not forget that Clinton’s “moment” was a cynical act of politics to solidify a level of appeal to the center, not a heartfelt position. So folks like George Will are saying “if our favorite Leftist shell of a candidate will only mouth a helpful lie about being against the current chaos, we can help drag him across the electoral finish line.” Talk about cynical…hoping for the right public lie to justify your wrong public support.
Not only Will, but Andrew Sullivan, George Packer at the Atlantic, Robert Tracinski at The Bulwark and no doubt dozens of other online pundits and talking heads have dragged out the ‘Sister Soljuah Moment’ meme over the past 48 hours, to the point it would have made a great drinking game to go into the weekend — take a shot every time a Biden-supportive pundit in panic mode tells their candidate he needs to emulate Bill Clinton’s ’92 strategy.
The cynical question is why this week — why weren’t any of these people saying the same thing last week, during the DNC Convention, that Biden at least had to take a brief moment out of the four days to say something about the rioting. Kenosha and Minneapolis v2.0 may not have happened until this week, but if wasn’t as though there’s hadn’t been almost three months of rioting going on prior to the Democrats’ convention.
They didn’t see the need for Biden to speak out about the riots for the same reason Don Lemon didn’t say anything until Tuesday night — because the bad internal polling numbers didn’t come back until after the convention was over. So none of these pundits want Biden to emulate Clinton because it’s the right thing to do — they want a Sister Soljuah moment because they think Joe needs it to stem his polling decline.
You can always tell when the talking points go out.