Richard Benjamin Crosby, an associate professor of English and rhetoric at Iowa State University, said the main goal of any convention is to reach outside the party’s base in an attempt to gain wider appeal among the voting demographics.
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Trump stood up for gays against radical Islamic terrorism, and later thanked evangelicals, promising to repeal the Johnson Amendment, which prevents churches from endorsing political candidates.
Then there was Ivanka, the most high-profile of the Trump kids, who introduced the nominee and described her father as “the people’s nominee” and cast him as a champion for women.
As his speech continued, Trump seemed to veer more from the script on the teleprompter and slipped back into his usual tone, much to the delight of the crowd.
Nowhere in the speech was the “shining city on the hill” Ronald Reagan promised or the “audacity of hope” that Barack Obama said he believed.
“He’s been able to identify an audience that no one knew was there”. “I don’t want his endorsement”, Trump said. Between 2010 and 2014 a grand total of 121 people released from immigration custody were later charged with murder. “He speaks to Americans at a gut level”. Trump said that Cruz changed his speech at the last minute and that was “dishonorable”.
Of the whole, huge mess, he said, “I alone can fix it“.
It was an altogether smoother – and more scripted – chapter in a footloose convention shocked a night earlier by Ted Cruz’s prime-time speech, a pointed non-endorsement of the nominee by the Texas senator who finished second in the race and came to Cleveland harboring grievances – and future presidential ambitions. Now he just has to convince the American public that it would work for them as well.
“Indeed, three days ago I talked on the phone with him and told him, ‘I’m not going to endorse you, ‘” Cruz said. He is a master at stoking (white) fear and exploiting (white) grievances; his visceral acceptance speech was tailored for Americans who feel picked on and screwed over, and they don’t care about parsing facts.
As the campaign now turns to the general election – Clinton is expected to be nominated at next week’s Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia – Arizona Republican Party Chairman Robert Graham was confident and upbeat. But Clinton didn’t hold back when it came to Trump and the GOP convention, which she deemed “perversely flattering” for spending more time talking about her than the problems facing the country. “So it will be really interesting to see how she responds to that”.
Trump painted a dire state of affairs in the United States and the world – instability overseas and crumbling infrastructure at home – and blamed those problems on President Barack Obama and his former secretary of state, presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. What she has said is that she wants to find ways to curb gun violence while protecting the right to bear arms.
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Several local and statewide Republican Party members were contacted for comment on the convention, however they were either not immediately available for comment or did not return messages.
