This week’s Republican convention did an especially efficient job of encapsulating the current state of the party after four years of Donald Trump’s leadership. In terms of the roster of speakers and the venues at which they spoke, the convention reflected the extent to which the party has become a personal extension of Trump. …
But the words of these speeches showed how much Trump’s consolidation of power within the party has been accompanied by his adoption of its existing ideological commitments. Speaker after speaker at this week’s convention reinforced standard Republican themes: small government, social traditionalism, veneration of the military and law enforcement, and attacks on “socialism,” the “radical left,” and the news media. CONT.
David A. Hopkins (Boston College), Honest Graft