by Robert Romano
Former President Donald Trump wants to trigger an avalanche of victories in 2024.
IN 1972, 1980, 1984 AND 1988Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush won monumental victories in 49, 44, 49, and 40 states in their re-election and general election campaigns.
Eventually earning the nickname “Reagan Democrats,” the appeal was to working-class Americans who were underrepresented by elites in both political parties. It was crucial to Trump’s narrow victory in 2016including the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as 1992that was a gigantic part of the reason Bush lost to Ross Perot in the general election and Patrick Buchanan in the primaries gobbling up a significant portion of voters who were not adequately represented by the Republican administration.
IN 2020These voters did not all vote for Trump, who, while outperforming his 2016 showing, was unable to overcome economic hardships, temporarily shedding 25 million jobs during the COVID-19 lockdown, and Trump lost Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, as well as Georgia and Arizona, to President Joe Biden in the Electoral College.
To restore and expand Trump’s coalition, he is returning to his 2016 strategy, choosing his vice presidential running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (Republican of Ohio), and selecting convention speakers who were once Trump opponents—whether the model Amber Rose or Teamsters chief Sean O’Brien (who did not endorse him but whose appearance gave members the green airy to vote for Trump)—and campaigning in New York, New Jersey, Virginia and other states that have long failed to support a Republican presidential candidate.
Vance aligns with Trump’s positions on trade, illegal immigration and foreign policy, supporting tariffs on Chinese goods, closing the southern border and opposing U.S. intervention in Ukraine. He also comes from humble roots in a working-class family, and his personal history of self-determination and service to his country in the Marines and now in the Senate, plus his youth — he is only 39 — make him a fit heir to Trump’s legacy.
As for the convention, rather than fielding only supporters, Trump has at least selected a few speakers who have looked at Trump and discovered that he is not who or what his opponents and the media have said he is. Vance, who was once highly critical of Trump, also fits this mold.
Trump is playing for blue states. If the broader strategy works, he will do so by winning against the so-called Reagan Democrats that Reagan’s successors took for granted, and that could be a landslide victory, and it could also be crucial in helping Republicans get elected to Congress. Trump will need a larger majority to get anything done.
It’s a riskier strategy — some Republicans and conservatives were offended by Rose and O’Brien’s presence at the convention, for example — but it could also pay off bigger when voters get to the ballot box.
It’s also part of Trump’s recent message of national unity after his brush with death in a near-fatal July 13 attack in Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump is now a direct victim of both political violence and political persecution, harbingers of anarchy and tyranny.
This may come as a shock to many who spend time in close circles, but wishing violence and death on political opponents, like political persecution, is deeply unpopular with Americans, and I believe polls will confirm this in the coming days. Just ask actor Jack Black, who recently laughed on stage at a joke told by one of his bandmates who wished Trump would be killed, before he publicly apologized and ended his tour with the band.
Imagine a hypothetical civil war with factions of parties that want to kill each other as the social order collapses. Maybe 5 to 10 percent of the population are combatants. So 90 to 95 percent, including families, are bystanders caught in the crossfire. When we imagine or desire such a fight (as the calls for political violence and imprisonment of opponents suggest), we sacrifice the civil society on which the republic depends for its survival. This is the Achilles heel of representative government.
Biden impeaching Trump is unpopular, attacking the police is unpopular, etc. The danger of political violence and impeachment is that it is a recipe for totalitarianism, as has been the case in the past. For Trump supporters, many who want Trump to do the same thing with impeachment of the other side, I would simply say that legal force is still force.
The only way to stop government defense is to prevent it. And to stop violence that begets violence, we must make peace with our adversaries and restore civil society. The alternative threatens all our families and those we love, and is an abyss that, when countries fall into it, can take decades to climb out of. If you think you would not do well in a state of nature, and even if you did, please do not desire it. Tyranny is what awaits on the other side. It always does.
Trump’s unity message will be that he doesn’t want to “get you.” You don’t have to feel threatened by him. He wants to protect you. All Americans. This may seem strange to Trump supporters already in his camp, but for voters who are looking at Trump again with recent eyes after he was falsely demonized as a threat to democracy, who sought to install himself as a dictator for life, and then was nearly killed in that environment, it is an significant message.
The goal of this strategy is to change perceptions and views about Trump, and by extension, Republicans. It is a necessary step to win over the working-class people in his coalition, who have proven to be the creators of American policy.
Trump was as of September 2023, he leads in national polls against Bidenmeaning that the popular vote had already taken place before the June 27 debate or the July 13 coup attempt.
After being nearly assassinated on national television in a crucible of political violence that could have sparked civil unrest or worse, Trump will emerge on Thursday, July 18, as a changed man of power who is ready to lead America again — and to do that, he believes he must represent a broad swath of Americans. Trump is showing his base how he thinks previously hostile voters can be won over, but whether that strategy works or becomes a eternal fixture in Republican politics remains to be seen. For now, this is Trump’s party, and this is his show. Stay tuned.
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Robert Romano is vice president of public policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
Photo “Donald Trump at the RNC Convention” by Daniel Scavino Jr.
