Take it to the Polls: Republicans attempt to Unify the Party behind Donald Trump

Every four years, delegates from the Republican National Committee (RNC) formally nominate their candidates for President and Vice-President at the Republican National Convention. This year’s convention began on Monday, August 24, and ended on Thursday, August 27, with President Trump formally accepting the nomination. With the candidates all formally nominated by both the Democratic and Republican Party, the general election has officially begun. While nominating candidates is the primary goal of the RNC, it is also a time to establish a comprehensive party platform, amplify rising voices in the party, and bring in new voters. However, at this year’s convention, the RNC will not adopt a party platform, citing COVID-19 as the reason for a lack of development. Instead, the RNC “has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda” and “will adjourn without adopting a new platform until the 2024 Republican National Convention.” It is worthy to note that the President’s second term agenda consists of 54 bullet points, whereas the 2016 Republican Platform was 58 pages long.

The 2020 Republican National Convention kicked off with a morning session on Monday in Charlotte, North Carolina. Ronna McDaniel, Chair of the Republican National Committee, spoke first followed by Scott Walker, Mike Pence, and Donald Trump. Scott Walker formally placed Pence’s name in nomination, which is the first time the Vice-President has been nominated first. Michael Whatley, Chair of the North Carolina Republican Party, a valuable swing state, placed Donald Trump’s name in nomination with Joe Gruters, a State Senator from Florida, seconding the nomination. The traditional role call of states pledging delegates was interrupted by Scott Walker, who introduced Mike Pence, Mike Pence, who gave a pre-acceptance thank you speech, and the President who gave a rally-style speech to an in-person crowd. Monday’s evening segments took place primarily from the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, DC. The key speakers were Nikki Haley, Donald Trump Jr., and Senator Time Scott.

Tuesday featured familiar Republican voice Senator Rand Paul who invited people to join him in supporting President Trump in his efforts to, among other things, “fight the socialists poisoning our schools and burning our cities.” The demonization of socialism has been a common theme of the Trump campaign and the Republican Party for the 2020 election. It is an appeal to voters who are scared of violence breaking out in the street. This is on-message with the Trump Campaign’s “Law and Order” rhetoric that has emerged in response to public outrage at the police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless others. Three key speakers from Tuesday were Eric Trump, Mike Pompeo, and Melania Trump. The most controversial segment of the night came when Mike Pompeo addressed the Republican National Convention in a videotaped speech from the rooftop of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, touting the Trump administration’s foreign policy. No sitting Secretary of State has ever made a convention speech. The Washington Post explains that this tradition dates back to just after World War II, when Sen. Arthur Vandenberg, former Republican Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, asserted that “politics stops at the water’s edge.” A 2019 memorandum from the State Department Office of the Legal Advisor states that sitting political appointees are prohibited from “political activity in concert with a partisan candidate, political party, or partisan group.”

Wednesday saw Lara Trump, Richard Grenell, and Mike Pence all give keynote addresses with Pence formally accepting the Republican nomination for Vice-President. Richard Grenell, Acting Director of National Intelligence, attempts to appeal to voters who are fed up with conventional foreign policymaking. ABC News saw this as a common message throughout the convention—that Trump is the “ultimate defender of America’s interests” and a “cautious commander in chief.” Staying on-message, Grenell claims that in 2016, “No candidate could bring themselves to admit that something had gone badly wrong with American foreign policy” except for Donald Trump and said, “A return to the Biden way of thinking means America gives the radical terrorist regime in Tehran a planeload of cash in the middle of the night.” The most commonly shared message throughout the RNC was this assertion that under a Biden Administration, no one will be safe. In his acceptance speech, Pence said “the hard truth is, you won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America.”

On the closing day of the 2020 Republican National Convention, Donald Trump formally accepted the Republican nomination for President of the United States from the South Lawn of the White House. In his speech, Trump attempted to defend his record as President, while painting Joe Biden as a weak instrument of the left, a “trojan horse for socialism,” and a “destroyer of American greatness.” The president placed particular emphasis on his COVID-19 response, promising a vaccine by the end of the year. President Trump’s 70-minute 2020 acceptance speech was the second-longest in history, only behind his 2016 acceptance speech in Cleveland.

As the general election draws nearer, the messaging for the two major-party campaigns maintains consistent but not unchanging. Over the next few months, it will be interesting to see where the messaging for the respective campaigns will go and what kinds of voters they will target.