Change just a few letters, and now it’s Trump’s Party
The 2024 Republican Party convention opened with a clear view it's no longer the GOP's to control
MILWAUKEE _ The Republican National Convention opened Monday with a clear sign from Donald Trump — it’s his party now and long into the future.
As the investigation into the attempted assassination of Trump continued Monday, just days after the fateful attack in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump quickly moved on with his show, at his convention.
He filmed the series wrap of the longest running spinoff of his own long-running reality TV career, news alerts blared out who was off “Veepstakes” island one by one, first Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, then North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum. Sen. Tim Scott, who didn’t make it to the grand finale, was awarded a Monday night speaking role — however model and MAGA influencer Amber Rose and Teamsters union chief Sean O’Brien headlined the night.
And then he selected his heir to the nationalist populist throne — Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance.
With that, Trump buried the vestigial factions of the old GOP — Barry Goldwater raised “movement conservatives”, business conservatives from the U.S. Chamber wing of the party and Reagan-styled foreign policy hawks like his former vice president, Mike Pence.
To commemorate the moment, Trump and his campaign erased them by swapping out two letters. He took the “P” and the “e” off his Trump/Pence logo and wrote over it with a “V” and an “a” - Trump/Vance.
He replaced the man who defied him in the January 6th insurrection saying that no one person can unilaterally decide an election — it’s un-American as defined by the founders who refused a kingdom in favor of a democratic republic. And replaced him with a “neo-monarchist” from the nationalist-populist wing of the right, which argues that ahead of the country’s 250th birthday, it’s time to end democracy and revert to a king’s singular rule.
“This is not the Republican Party, this is the Trump Party,” one veteran Republican operative said after Vance’s selection.
The leaders of the old Republican Party were scarce at the opening of the Republican Party’s official convention — the most important event one of the nation’s two major political parties hosts every four years, to officially select its nominee for president.
Even as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, one of the last bulwarks of the old party, cheered Trump for surviving an attempted assassination just days ago he was booed by the members of the Trump party inside the convention. Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy who hustled his way into the speaker’s office by playing to Trump relentlessly, was kept to the hallways while the man who replaced him after his historic ouster, House Speaker Mike Johnson, MC’d much of the first day under the bright lights.
And Pence, who was castigated by Trump and the Trump Party, but still maintains a dedicated following among anti-abortion activists and the old guard of the socially conservative activists, was nowhere to be found.
To some it felt like the Vegan BBQ stand at the convention, or former Kanye “Ye” West girlfriend Amber Rose taking top billing — something strange, if interesting, but definitely not Republican.
“This is not conservative, not classical liberalism,” said one veteran Republican outside the Fi-Serv Arena in Milwaukee.
And that long-serving Republican activist was right, it’s not. It’s something distinctly Trump’s, a hard push away from the Republican Party to a neo-monarchist party.
But not all of the GOP has shifted to Trump’s nationalist party. The decision to give the Teamsters’ O’Brien a prime speaking slot Monday was met with quizzical glares from the party delegates as he railed against corporate greed in a speech more befitting of a Democratic convention.
And top names of the old guard who paid their dues to Trump, often in the form of buying a ticket in his “Veepstakes”, like Scott, were gifted primetime speaking slots — keeping their voices in the mix.
The surface level of the opening of the 2024 convention seemed to indeed show the “unity” Trump is seeking behind him and his new party, but simmering below the surface are the factions of the Republican Party who made it into the postwar big tent powerhouse which put him in the White House eight years ago.
“Vegan BBQ” stand … good call.