The official RNC Convention thread (1 Viewer)

[coldseat]

Why are the Republicans doing their convention during the day? Isn't the roll call and nomination normally done at night?

Anybody watching or going to watch in parts?

What are the expectations of the convention for those who support Trump?

 

[Maxp]

I've listened to enough Dan Crenshaw to know as a politician, he is an empty suit. He has no new ideas and parrots out the same tired defenses of failed policies. I know he is intelligent and I know he served honorably with the seals. In one interview he bashed Obamacare, then said Medicare for all can't possibly work. When questioned what would work he said a ealthcare market that pooled high risk patients. You know Obamacare...

 

[EmBeeFiveOhFour]

 

[superchuck500]

Also, politics aside - never wear green on national TV.

 

[Saintamaniac]

Wow....soooo many lies. So green a dress.

 

[The moose]

The pandemic denial is so huge.

Not a mask in the house well maybe a couple. This is leadership at its best. Leading these idiots to the ICU.

 

[nolaspe]

Dan Rather dropping the savagery...

 

[MT15]

Jim Gaffigan went off last night, evidently. I’m not sure I can post what he said about Trump, because he drops an f bomb. But he has evidently had enough of the crap being peddled, and it appeared he was watching the RNC. Look it up, worth the read.

It‘s refreshing to see him call out the BS. I think he’s pretty much a moderate, from what I know, and he hasn’t been political in the past that I’m aware of.

It seems Lou Holtz made disparaging remarks about Biden’s faith, and that was at least part of what set him off.

 

[MT15]

This guy makes a valid point.



Every politician who took part in the RNC is being a total hypocrite.

 

[MT15]

Hearing from a lot of Republicans about the use of the WH

 

[Infoman]

So what did ya'll think of the actual speech?

 

[The moose]

So what did ya'll think of the actual speech?

I think it was exceptionally stupid to play the blame game with the other side after he has been in for a term. Works when you are on the outside not inside

 

[Infoman]

I think it was exceptionally stupid to play the blame game with the other side after he has been in for a term. Works when you are on the outside not inside

Yeah... "modern politics" on both sides has become little more than a finger pointing parade... inside or outside doesn't seem to matter anymore.

I was interested in what everyone thought about his delivery, tone, and how it will or will not resonate with potential voters that are on the fence.... (because we know he has his base locked up - and we know he's not getting any progressives to turn)

 

[JimEverett]

Yeah... "modern politics" on both sides has become little more than a finger pointing parade... inside or outside doesn't seem to matter anymore.

I was interested in what everyone thought about his delivery, tone, and how it will or will not resonate with potential voters that are on the fence.... (because we know he has his base locked up - and we know he's not getting any progressives to turn)

I only listened to about 15-20 minutes. It struck me as very flat. He had a couple of humorous lines, but his delivery failed to really capitalize on them. But I don't think that is all that important. He laid out the campaign strategy - and based on what I have read this morning it is basically what everyone expected.

I have no idea if it will resonate, although I do think the longer these protests go on, and perhaps the more chaotic they become - Trump benefits.

 

[Infoman]

I only listened to about 15-20 minutes. It struck me as very flat. He had a couple of humorous lines, but his delivery failed to really capitalize on them. But I don't think that is all that important. He laid out the campaign strategy - and based on what I have read this morning it is basically what everyone expected.

I have no idea if it will resonate, although I do think the longer these protests go on, and perhaps the more chaotic they become - Trump benefits.

Yeah, that's about where I landed on it as well.... That's why I was asking, I have no idea either. And I agree that more chaos benefits Trump.

I personally thought it was one of his most well delivered speeches - content aside. (and obviously, that's not saying much).

 

[The moose]

Yeah... "modern politics" on both sides has become little more than a finger pointing parade... inside or outside doesn't seem to matter anymore.

I was interested in what everyone thought about his delivery, tone, and how it will or will not resonate with potential voters that are on the fence.... (because we know he has his base locked up - and we know he's not getting any progressives to turn)

We really have no yeah but here. He has been in power with the house and Senate for some and accomplished not a damn thing that helped Americans really.

To have no policy but trust me after the pandemic fiasco if just stupid.

When the rest of the free world has healthcare and they are not socialist why would that make us socialist? It is just so stupid on so many levels

 

[Saintamaniac]

So what did ya'll think of the actual speech?

I think 2020 is God's punishment to the United States and Trump's speech last night was his/her final warning to us as a nation.

 

[TaylorB]

Yeah... "modern politics" on both sides has become little more than a finger pointing parade... inside or outside doesn't seem to matter anymore.

I was interested in what everyone thought about his delivery, tone, and how it will or will not resonate with potential voters that are on the fence.... (because we know he has his base locked up - and we know he's not getting any progressives to turn)

This isn't any sort of ground-breaking analysis, but his message was consistent with his entire presidency. He's targeting a mostly white base with fear mongering about what would happen if "others" take power. His base understands that "others" includes pretty much anyone who isn't a white conservative. He's not offering any sort of vision of governance except maintaining "order," which means preservation of existing hierarchies, while falsely implying that no such hierarchies actually exist.

His message is effective with his base because fear is an extremely powerful human emotion which allows him to control voters in a number of ways, including being more willing to ignore his lies and failures. For middle class white voters who've been harmed by ever increasing wage inequality at the hands of Trump policies like the tax bill with trillions in benefits to the most wealthy, attacks on affordable access to healthcare, the tanking of the economy due in part to an inept response to COVID, and future attacks on Social Security, etc. he's found that getting white voters wound up about defacement of confederate statues by "antifa" (or whoever), or previously, big caravans of brown people coming to get them, is an effective way to redirect the blame for their misery from himself and his enablers to Democrats, who, uh, have not been in charge for the last 4 years. People get really offended by this, but that ☝ -- scapegoating liberals and non-whites for economic hardships of whites -- is the reason people compare him to certain infamous far right leaders of the past century.

For all the noise about his mental health, or whatever, he is and has always been an expert at messaging. For example, people still believe, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that he's a self-made billionaire, due in part to the fact that he's repeated that lie his entire life. Likewise, 40%+ of people still believe, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that he's doing a great job as president and is fighting for them. He deserves credit for understanding how to project confidence and manipulate people; it is the thing that allowed him to become president. It is incredible to consider that an effective message for an incumbent is to constantly point out that the horrible state the country is in somehow foreshadows what it will be like if the opposition party wins

But he governs this way, and therefore speaks this way, because he doesn't know how to do anything else. It is incumbent on Democrats to expose the fundamental weakness in Trump's campaign: he doesn't have a message on how he's going to govern -- the RNC's official platform is just "vote Trump" -- because he doesn't have a plan to govern. He never has. His instinct in literally any situation affecting the nation is to figure out how to extract personal and political value from it. Last night, he was effective in obscuring that fundamental fact and manipulating the message like he always does, because that's who he is.

He's well past the point of being able to broaden the tent to include more people, so the best way to gain votes seems to be ratcheting up the fear among his base to ensure he gets every single one of them to try to survive in battleground states. In that sense, it was an effective speech . Democrats in 2020 should never forget how effective that same message was in 2016.

 

[RobF]

I was interested in what everyone thought about his delivery, tone, and how it will or will not resonate with potential voters that are on the fence.... (because we know he has his base locked up - and we know he's not getting any progressives to turn)

I don't think targeting voters on the fence is the main focus of that part of the strategy. It's an emotional appeal, most effective on existing supporters, aiming to consolidate their base, ramping up the rhetoric to 11 to make as many of them as possible feel that their lives depend on who they vote for.

If they can maintain their vote and drive down the opposition vote, especially in the key states, they can win. They don't actually need more voters.

If their existing voters feel like they need to vote to survive, regardless of how detached from reality that is, they're going to turn out. So the strategy is to simply depict a view of the world where that's the case; doesn't matter if it's not real. So, they'll take the rhetoric about the opposition to ludicrous levels, or they'll take negative images of Trump's America, and rebrand them Biden's, for example. That doesn't work well on people who aren't largely getting their views of the world coloured by them, directly or indirectly. But it works fantastically on people who are.

And if they can then also drive down the opposition vote, be that by campaign messages aimed at convincing swing voters it's not worth voting, or by suppressing the postal vote, etc., then that's a winning strategy.