GOP Convention Ends With Trump's Long, Dark Speech

Well, the Republican convention finally wrapped up last night with the longest acceptance speech in at least the last half century. At least last night the speakers managed to stay on schedule so Trump could actually start his speech at peak prime time. But, as we’ve come to expect, some of the speakers reflected viewpoints that are out of the mainstream or in conflict with Trump’s themes. Peter Thiel is a classic libertarian who in 2009 wrote that he no longer believed “that freedom and democracy are compatible”. In his speech, he railed against the fake culture wars that “only distract us from our economic decline” which I’m not sure is what the cultural conservative wanted to hear and, like many others we heard, bashed Hillary over Libya, saying, “She pushed for a war in Libya, and today it’s a training ground for ISIS.” Unfortunately, it is relatively easy to find the video where Trump supported taking out Gaddaffi at the time the question was being debated. Ivanka Trump then came on to provide the introduction to her father and right off the bat admitted she was basically unaffiliated with either Republicans or Democrats. The truth of the matter is that she was so unaffiliated that she could not even bother to register to vote. She followed that up with an endorsement of her father that included her belief that he was for equal pay for equal work, for childcare that’s affordable and accessible, and concerned about onerous student debt, all Democratic issues that I don’t remember Trump ever talking about. But it set the stage for the final act.

I have to admit I could not bear to watch the speech but I did read his prepared remarks and my first reaction was that this was the speech of a budding dictator. Lots of problems and issues were listed, many of them pure fabrication, and the only solution offered was that he would take care of it all after January 20, 2017. There were no policies or over-arching principles as to how he would solve these problems other than his greatness. He sounded very much like the new Philippines’ President Dutarte who basically ran on the theme that he would take care of terrorism and corruption one way or another with more than a subtle implication that doing so would include extra-judicial procedures. Apparently Trump’s angry delivery of this speech only enhanced that impression. The statistics and fear mongering about crime totally belies all statistics that violent crime in this country has dropped significantly and continues to drop. I believe a recent statistic showed that the murder rate New York City today is actually lower than it was in those golden days of the early 1960s and the overall crime rate has continued to drop during Obama’s eight years. Cataloguing Trump’s falsehoods is more than a full time job, but you can read about the 21 specific lies in his speech here. Despite all his anger, it seems that the pace was slow and plodding indicating Trump’s problems with sticking to a teleprompter rather than just winging it. It finally ended around 11:30. It is hard to imagine how this speech helped Trump. The immigrant bashing will just consolidate the support of minority voters. The America First rhetoric on foreign policy will put off business and neo-conservative Republicans. Perhaps it will expand his strength among working class whites but that will probably be offset by the loss of college educated whites. And that demographic is just not enough to win elections anymore. But Trump has gotten this far despite all expectations. We will soon find out if his popularity extends beyond the hard-core that currently controls the Republican party.